The Ocean Held Its Breath
by LadyoftheLounge
Summary: Sequel to Just a Few More Years. The crew went on what should have been a routine flight to Antarctica, but a shocking incedent and dark discovery leads to the whole thing spiralling out of control.
1. 1

Chris was having a thought.

When Chris was really young, and got moved into Martin's room, their father built them a bunk bed. For the first couple of years, Martin had the top bunk, but as soon as Chris was strong enough to competently and consistently climb the ladder, Martin relinquished it to his younger brother. Why he would do that, when the top bunk is usually first choice for kids, and the oldest sibling always has the say in where he gets to sleep, well, there never was one single reason. Part of it was because Martin liked the idea of turning where he slept into a cozy little burrow, like a permanent pillow fort, and he could do that more successfully with the lower bunk. Another was that already Martin was a messy kid, and the top bunk was a nice refuge for Chris, who didn't like always tripping over Martin's things. Most of all, Chris just wanted the top bunk, and Martin recognized the unfairness in the principle of eldest-gets-first-choice, and decided to offer up the bunk to someone who otherwise wouldn't have a say in the matter. There were a few other factors that all came together, and both boys were very happy for it, even though Martin told Chris at that time the reason they were switching places was because Martin was worried that the bunk bed would break and didn't want to be on the top when it did. This was a joke, of course, and certainly would never happen, but it didn't stop the nights the very young Chris spent lying wide awake, horrified that his resting place could collapse at any moment, and a subsequent apology from Martin, forced out of him by his mother, for giving Chris the first real emotional crisis in his life.

So Chris was having a thought.

He was remembering lying in that top bunk sometime halfway through his fifth-grade year. The room was cold, but Chris was cozy, under a mountain of blankets, cuddling very closly to the plush sifaka lemur he slept with every night. Had he not been so buried by warm comforts, the early-winter, early-morning temperature would have surely woken him up; instead, what aroused him from his sleep was a series of familiar creaks coming up the bunk bed ladder, and the whispers that followed.

"Chris! Psssst... Chris!"

Chris rolled over, and saw a pair of wide, excited blue eyes peaking over the side of the bed. He groaned, and turned back away.

"Chris! Wake up!"

"'S too early, go back to bed."

"No, come on, you gotta see this!"

Silence.

"Chris, it's snowed!"

More silence.

"It's not, like, the light snow that normally happens this time, either! A blizzard came through or something, I think it's enough to cancel school!"

This stirred Chris. He sat up, his blankets falling around him like the big sheets of snow sliding off the neighborhood's roofs.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, it's halfway up our window!"

"Ah, man! The science fair was today! I worked so hard on my elephant presentation!"

"Oh, I forgot that was today!"

"You forgot about the _science fair?_"

"Hey, it's not my science fair," he said defensively. "All I had to look forward to today was a reading quiz on _Old Man and the Sea_. For me, this is a win."

Chris sighed.

"Hey," Martin continued, "cheer up, buddy! I'm sure they'll just reschedule it, and you'll get to show everyone how awesome elephants are! For now, we have a snow day! We can kick back, build a snowman, or snow elephant even, if you want, or snow whatever! Or we can watch cartoons, drink cocoa, maybe chuck a few snowballs at Zach, 'cuz he makes his projects about enslaving animals, like, _every year_."

Chris, with a huff, collapsed back onto the bed.

Martin sighed. "Or, sleep in. We can do that too."

"Martin, throwing snowballs at Zach isn't gonna change his mind, it's just gonna make him mad. He'll cry, and tell his parents, and we're gonna get in trouble."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! And mom and dad won't be on our side like they normally are, because we'll've _thrown snowballs at him_."

"I don't know, I couldn't see mom and dad ever being on their side." He looked left and right, then leaned in, as if someone else were in the room and might hear. "I once heard mom calling Zach's mom a _bitch_."

Chris shot up and hit Martin over the head with a pillow. "Martin!" He cried. "That's a _bad word_."

"Eh, if mom said it, it can't be that bad," he said. He knew all and well it was a profanity, but again, mom said it, so why couldn't he?

"Nuh-uh! Tommy Perkins said it once in class, and he got sent to the _principal's office_. Ms. Herring was so mad!"

"Okay, okay, it's a bad word!" he said, playfully trying to appease his brother. "I was wrong, do you forgive me?" he asked with a big, impish, jovial grin.

"Hmmmm... maybe, if you make waffles!"

"What?" Martin exclaimed, his smirk fading quickly.

"Waffles! Waffles! Waffles!" Chris began to chant.

"Ugh, fine." Martin began to descend the ladder. He looked back up. "Well? Are you coming?"

"Nah," said Chris, lying back down. "You can make the waffles, _I'm_ gonna sleep in."

Martin chuckled and rolled his eyes.

School ended up not being cancelled that day. Martin still made the waffles anyway, as a "luck for your science fair project, lil' bro, and for my quiz, because we'll both need it." The science fair did still happen, as did the reading quiz; Martin got a B, Chris got 3rd place, and Zach, to no one's surprise, made his project about the WWII operation that forcibly used pigeons to guide missiles, and how it was an awesome idea, and he got 1st place for his "advanced use of scientific processes and reference to historical events" and because his mom was on the school board.

What happened was, while that was a lot of snow for that time of year, it wasn't as much as they could get later in the winter, so the school decided to press on, despite the slower traffic, and complaints from a particular 1st-place-winning student that his "jealous" classmate pegged him with a snowball after the fair.

Chris did get in trouble for that, as he predicted. He got a month of detention, and nearly a lifetime of conflict with Zach. Granted, the two were already headed down that path regardless of the incident, and they really already hated each other, but when thinking about the two's history, where it all went so south, that was generally one of the first things that came to Chris' mind. A snowball seems like such a little thing, but to a child? That snowball falls down the mountain side, picking up more snow as it tumbles, growing and growing in size and ferocity, flattening everything in its path, shaking, lurching, as its own monstrosity intensifies, as the spinning becomes sickening and out of control until it crashes horribly and shatters into the rigid valley, its icy entrails smothering, gripping the earth below it in its shameful calamity.

Chris was starting to wonder why he was having a thought. Why this particular thought was running through his mind, planting a panic in his chest that did not let go, but pulsated and pounded so terribly. He began to try and find out what had triggered the start of it, what sensations brought it up.

Was it...the feeling of lying down, like when he was in his bunk bed? No, he wasn't lying in the position he normally would have.

Was it... the fact that they were tracking Zach? He had showed up in Antarctica, and they were on their way to figure out why, and... no, that wasn't it either. Chris didn't know _where_ he was right now.

Was it... the actual pain he was afflicted by? The strange dizziness, the difficult breaths? Maybe, that was getting somewhere; but there's no real reason that would cause him to consider that specific memory.

He decided that to get to the bottom of things, he had to go back to the original source, and see what it had in common with how he felt now. He remembered being slightly cold, and he was very cold now. He remembered being drowsy, and now, well, that was an understatement. But there was that one thing, that one thing that stood out.

The whispers.

_Chris._

_Chris!_

_Chris, wake up!_

_Come on, you gotta get up!_

Chris opened his eyes, and really, he was hit with more questions than answers. Nothing he saw looked _right_. He was lying on his back, but he felt a little folded too, like he was sitting in a lawn chair or airplane seat that didn't go down all the way. He shifted his weight ever so slightly, and he felt some grinding along his spine. He was on top of shards of glass. He was looking upwards, he could feel that, but he was staring at the floor of the Tortuga. In fact, it was going up and away from him, which was wrong, wrong, wrong, just like everything else. He just caught out of the corner of his eye some maroon blur disappear towards the cockpit. Aviva was clinging to one of the seats, but her back was away from him, and she was hunched over and convulsing. It looked like she might be throwing up. That made Chris more aware of the taste in his own mouth, and the feeling on his shirt, and he realized he had, too.

Where was Koki? He couldn't see Koki. Where was Jimmy? Jimmy was missing too. And where was Martin?

"Chris! Oh, thank God."

_There was Martin._

He was awkwardly kneeling to the left of Chris, one leg bent onto what should be the floor, the other on what should be the wall. One hand was firmly grasping Chris' wrist, the other was trying to lift up his head. Chris coughed, then winced, as that pain surged through his chest again. He must have worn it pretty clearly on his face, because Martin winced, too.

"Martin, what happened?" Chris gargled.

"We crashed." Martin said. That probably should have been obvious, but hearing Martin say it put the pieces together. He was starting to remember, it had been smooth sailing towards Antarctica, even with it being the first time they had flown there. They had just come up over the shore when the Tortuga came to a sudden and otherwise impossible halt, there was a horrible, unbearably loud metallic screeching and grinding sound, and the rear of the ship began rising upwards then -

There was a loud bang, accompanied by a tremendous shuddering, and suddenly the ship was spinning violently out of control.

And Chris had not fastened himself into a seat in time.

"Things make sense now." Chris decided, finally.

"I thought you were dead, for real." Martin said in a frightened hush. "Are you... are you okay?"

"Me? Yeah, sure."

_You know, aside from the headache and the fact that breathing hurts. _Chris wanted to add, but Martin looked stressed, so Chris kept it to himself. It wasn't like Martin couldn't tell, however. The worry on his face intensified.

Suddenly, there was a scream from the cockpit. It was Koki. Martin spun his head in its direction, but did not move from Chris' side, no matter how desperately conflicted he was on doing so.

"Go help Koki." Chris said. Martin turned back to him.

"But, I can't-"

"Go, go, I'll be okay; I just need a minute."

Martin hesitated, then nodded. He got up a little unsteadily and sprinted in the direction of the cries for help - at least, as close as he could get to sprinting trying to climb uphill on that smooth floor. Either whatever they had to do didn't take long, or Chris blacked out again, because the next thing he knew, Koki and Martin were emerging, dragging with them a limp Jimmy, who had trails of blood streaming down his face. Aviva, who had gathered herself, gasped in horror at the sight, but Martin quickly cried out, "he's okay, he's just unconscious!" And her look went from terrified to determined, as she carefully edged herself towards them to help them find a place to put him down. "He hit his head, he doesn't seem to have other super serious injuries, but we can't tell for sure." Martin continued. They finally settled on the farthest side of the central console, which had formed into a nice cradle in the ship's new orientation.

As soon as Jimmy was laid down, Martin turned and bolted back towards his brother - a bit too hurriedly, though, as he started to slip, and just managed to snatch one of the chairs before he catapulted himself into a full somersaulting fall. He then carefully though with no less urgency continued down to Chris, who was now pretty awake and aware of things, but still seemed unable to get himself up out of the corner he was in. Martin was going to pick Chris up and carry him to the rest of the crew so he could be more comfortably and less dangerously positioned, but that proved to be a difficult task to begin, with each angle of approach that Martin started then had to stop and reevaluate. There was broken glass everywhere, and Martin for very good reason did not want to slice his arms open. On top of that, there wasn't a great stable place for Martin to stand, not to mention he had to worry about that unidentified injury Chris had, which Martin was at this point very much aware of, thanks in part to the labored breaths his brother was making. Miraculously, Martin finally managed to get a complete hold of his brother, with only one shard of glass getting stuck in his arm, and only one small shriek of pain out of Chris.

Martin made the arduous climb up to everyone else, and set Chris down on the edge of the console, where he could sit, leaning over onto its top, which was now of course angled down and away from him.

Now Chris was at a good vantage point to see the rest of the ship, and it was a mess. Power was out. All the monitors had been ripped from their homes, broken and settled at the bottom, contributing to the bed of glass that once bore him. The biggest source of that glass was the sunroof, which was practically pulverized, now letting in the biting icy air of Antarctica.

The processing he was able to do of his surroundings was short-lived, however. The sudden stress and pain of being picked up, carried, then set down again brought a second wave of delirium over Chris, to the point that when the other three started talking to each other, he couldn't understand what they were saying. Aviva said something, Martin nodded. Martin said something, Koki said something, Martin said something else, and then Aviva, and then...

Martin grabbed Chris by the shoulders right before he was about to faint and fall off his little perch. Another subsequent pain snapped Chris back awake, and he watched over his brother's shoulder as Aviva ran off towards the cockpit. Koki was missing again, but all Chris would have had to do to find her was turn his head in the other direction, towards where she was prying open the doors leading to the hangar.

"Okay, Chris, we have _got_ to figure out what's wrong with you."

Chris nodded weakly, no longer wanting to put himself or possibly his friends in danger over some sort of durability pride.

Chris grimaced as Martin lifted up his two shirts, as even just the friction of the fabric set off some amount of agony. Fortunately, Martin had picked up cues from Chris throughout the whole event that gave him a rough estimate as to where the injury was, so he didn't have to go blindly poking around.

"Doesn't look like anything's punctured you, so that's good." Martin said. "There's a lot of bruising, though."

"Yuh-huh." Said Chris, who was also staring intently at those big purple spots halfway down his torso, trying to figure out what the source of the pain could be based on how it felt. This attempted line of thought was decimated, however, when Martin actually touched the thing, sending up another shockwave of excruciating pain. Martin hadn't even touched it that hard. Whatever it was, it was bad.

"Ack! Sorry, Chris." Martin said, who had quickly withdrawn his hand in surprise.

"S' okay, I didn't mean to scare ya," said Chris, who was beginning to be groggy again, but when his head flopped backwards he snapped it right back up, retaining consciousness for now.

Martin made sure Chris was alright again, then gave a second go at it. For Martin's sake, Chris held back the urge to just wail and managed to bring his visceral reaction down to a breathy hiss.

"Feels like it's broken."

"What's broken?" asked Chris.

"Your ribs, bro!" he said as he gingerly lowered Chris' shirt.

"Oh, right, duh. What else is there?"

Martin let out a small chuckle, but his smile faded fast. It _was_ really bad.

"Martin, do you think... Zach did this?"

"What?"

"He's why we came here, right?"

"I mean, yeah, but this isn't... something I'd think he was capable of!"

Chris thought in silence for a bit, then remembered something. Something he saw when the ship was plummeting. Something he couldn't make sense of.

At one point during the fall, Chris, in the midst of being tossed about, when the sunroof was pointed at the ground, saw through it: far down below them, it looked like there were _two_ people standing on the ice. Obviously the moment was a quick one, so Chris didn't see what exactly they looked like, and part of Chris wondered if he even saw what he thought he saw at all, or if he already had double vision from the dizzying descent.

He was about to say something about it, when Aviva emerged.

"The Tortuga's front door is wedged shut by all the snow. The entire cockpit is practically buried." She took a pause to catch her breath. "If I were to guess, given the angle we're in, the hangar door is sealed shut too."

"That's affirmative!" Said Koki, approaching from behind. "How's Chris?" she asked.

"Broken ribs, I - don't think it's _too_ bad." Martin fibbed. "How's the hangar?"

"All looks pretty trashed. Vehicles went every which way." Koki said. "So, even if we _could_ find some exit..." she trailed off.

"Okay, well we have to do something," said Martin, "what about through the sunroof? That's open."

"I... don't know if that's a good idea." Said Koki, who had gone to sit next to the still-unconscious Jimmy. "We could certainly get up to it, but the drop to the ground could be enormous, and to get around to the side where you could just take the slope down, you'd have to be as good a climber as-" she looked down at Chris. "Not to mention the sharp glass edges that you'd have to deal with now."

"Then..." said Martin, "that means..."

The crew sat in silence.

So Chris was having a thought.

They had crashed in Antarctica. The ship had taken on extensive damage, they were probably hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement, he had broken ribs and Jimmy was knocked out. Due to the strange nature of the accident, it was likely not an accident at all, but caused by a villain, maybe multiple villains, who were still out there somewhere - and, as an aside for you who have the advantage of foresight, Chris was not yet in the habit of collecting DNA samples, so the power suits were quite useless. Not to mention, with no power, they had no way to call for help, no way to activate lockdown mode, no way to keep themselves warm - with the sunroof smashed, the deathly cold air was funneling in.

And they were all trapped.


	2. 2

Everyone put on as many layers as they could; sweatshirts, fleeces, turtlenecks, and of course their jackets - This procedure was a challenge for Chris, of course, even with him trying his best not to flinch and squirm; it took the efforts of all the others to get him completely bundled up. It was not pleasant for any of them, having to hold down and wrap up an unintentionally uncooperative but also very injured friend, but the rest of it wasn't totally dour, though: at one point Martin made a frosty the magic snowman joke - something about how "there must be some magic in this old snow coat we've found" - because when they began to dress Jimmy, he woke up.

"Wha- what happened?" He said groggily, his head swiveling around on his neck as he slowly came to.

"We crashed." Said Aviva.

"Oh." His face was gradually gripped by horror, as his memory returned to him. "Oh. _Oh my God, that's right, we... I...I'm so sor_-"

"Jimmy, it wasn't your fault." Aviva said.

"But I should've-"

"Don't."

"But I-"

"Don't do that to yourself, Jimmy. It was _not your fault_."

"We think we got attacked." Martin said.

"Yeah." Said Chris. "They came out of nowhere, there's nothing any of us could've done."

"Yeah, I- wait, they?" Aviva turned to Chris. "I'm pretty sure Zach did this."

"Um, so, the thing is -" Chris quickly explained how he might have seen two people outside during the crash, but "it passed by so fast, so I don't know for sure." No one quite knew what to make of this information.

"So, is... everyone okay?" Jimmy asked sheepishly.

"We're all fine." Said Chris.

"Chris has a broken rib or two, but other than that, we'll survive." Said Martin.

"Chris, I-" Jimmy looked like he was going to start another fruitless apology.

"Jimmy, I didn't buckle up. That's on me, I should've payed more attention to the PSAs." Chris said, attempting some kind of light-heartedness. Jimmy just looked down at his feet.

"I still feel bad." Jimmy said.

"That's ok." Said Aviva. "We all do, Jimmy. But now, let's focus on getting out of here. We need to find what if anything is operational, we need to find a suitable exit point, and most of all, we need to make sure whoever did this isn't still out there." Everyone nodded. "Martin, you catch Jimmy up on what we know so far. Koki, come down with me to the hangar, let's test out the vehicles, to see for sure whether they're all broken." She paused and thought for a minute. "Actually, let's all head to the hangar for now. We can at least get away from the direct path of the cold."

Martin helped Jimmy up to his feet, but Jimmy was able to stand fine after that. He helped Martin carry Chris shoulder-to-shoulder, as the two girls ran ahead to pry the hangar door open.

The hangar wasn't as cold as the main floor, though it was still could enough to warrant the continued wearing of the extra clothes. It was, however, much darker. They turned on what portable lights they could: glow sticks, lanterns, flashlights, they even lit a few candles, which made for weak sources of heat, but that didn't deter hopeful hands from hovering over each tiny, shivering flame. The light still wasn't enough, however; the crew struggled to navigate the massive clutter and find a safe place to set Chris down.

Sadly, what Koki had guessed based off of her glances in the dark was proven true. All the Buzz Bikes' wings had been shattered. The Hover Cycle was split in half. The Butterflier was all ripped up, and the Cheetah Racer was completely mashed. The Createrra was the closest to being intact, though one of its doors had come off, the rest of the doors could neither be opened nor closed, and the car itself wouldn't start. With what they had and where they were, they could not figure out why.

"So the question is," Koki said, after they examined all of them, "which of these is going to be easiest to fix?"

"Well, we can't fix any of them in here." Aviva sighed. "It's too dark, and well, we're slanted."

"So you think we should take something outside? It's way too cold out there! Those freezing temperatures are going to mess with the mechanisms, if they don't kill us."

"I know! I know, but doing it down here would just be a safety hazard. Even though - ugh, I know how we might get out, but how could we get a vehicle out?"

"Wait! How can we get out?" Martin said.

"Through the vents, probably." Koki said, pointing to a grate on the wall. "But without an operational vehicle, or a creature power, we couldn't get far out there."

"And I haven't made any power discs for Antarctic creatures!" Aviva said. "I certainly couldn't make a new one. The MIK's busted."

"This day is just going great, isn't it?" Groaned Jimmy.

"Still, it could be worth it just to look around." Said Martin. "You know, maybe see what even happened?"

"Wait, Martin, are you sure that's a good idea?" Aviva asked. "What if whoever did this is still out there?"

"I feel like... if they were," Chris pointed out, "wouldn't they have tried to break in here by now?"

There was silence.

"I mean, that's a good point." Aviva said. "But I'm still not letting you go out there alone. I'm going with you."

"Fine by me." Martin shrugged.

"I'll come too." Koki said. "It's not like I can make much progress in here."

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind someone watching Chris, though." Martin said, quietly.

"What about me?" asked Jimmy. "I'll be in here."

"I think he means someone who didn't violently hit their head." Aviva said. "No offense."

"That's fair." Jimmy said. He didn't mind Koki's company, of course, he just didn't want her to have to feel as helpless as he did.

"I guess I can sort through this rubble, see if I can find any small parts that flew off the vehicles that we need to fix them." She said.

"Thanks, Koki." Aviva said, putting a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Sorry for keeping you in here, it's just -" she shot a worried look at Martin.

"Yeah, I get it." Said Koki. "Stay safe, girl." She hugged Aviva. "Keep him out of trouble."

Martin kneeled next to Chris.

"Hey, bud. You gonna be okay while I'm out?"

"Yeah, yeah." Chris said, sitting up straight, to try and not look so pathetic.

"Sit tight. Don't push yourself." Martin said.

"Aw man," Chris jested, "I was gonna challenge Jimmy to a boxing match."

Martin chuckled and shook his head.

"What? You think you're the only one who can be funny?" Chris continued cheekily, despite the anguish it caused him just to speak.

"Nah, you're alright, man. I'd hug you, but... well, you know."

"Yeah, no thanks." Chris sighed. "Hurts enough as is."

"Okay." Martin said, sadly.

"You have to come back, Martin, okay?" Chris said, quietly. "You really have to, I mean it."

"Don't worry." Martin got up. "I'll see you in a bit."

.

.

.

Aviva led the charge through the crawlspace - she was, after all, the person who knew the schematics and how to navigate them, though at every intersection she stopped, and Martin could hear her whispering under her breath, as she checked in with herself to make absolutely sure she knew they were headed in the right direction.

The journey was not fun. Despite taking on no serious injuries, they were both sore and worn from the thrashing they got in their seats as the Tortuga plummeted, and all that limp-body-hauling, steep-slope-climbing and heavy-door-prying the two had to do afterwards added to that wear. Martin could feel a lot of muscles cramping up. Aviva had the advantage of being smaller, but it was no picnic for her, either. They weren't wearing their gloves at the time, so they could more easily open the vents, and to try and reduce slipping and getting their hands snagged on all the metal seams, but that now meant having to walk their bare hands across arctic-chilled metal. Of course, they still did occasionally get caught on things, jacket sleeves got grabbed by screws, boots had to be yanked out of awkward corners, so it just felt pointless to leave their palms exposed. Only problem was, the tunnel was too narrow for them to reach into the backpack Aviva had brought. Their power suits too proved uncomfortable to crawl around in - now, obviously there were no animals they could activate the suits with, but they figured that if whoever caused the crash had hung around, and got the impression that these two might be capable of defending themselves, they'd be less likely to approach and attack. But the suits were now pinching and limiting movement in this narrow scramble - crawling forwards, scaling upwards, edging downwards, all with little to no wiggle room.

After what felt like an eternity of this drudging, they came at an end. Aviva opened a panel, and the two were hit with a beam of blinding light and a blast of biting wind. Aviva gulped. She knew where they'd come out, but still was not prepared for the ghastly and dizzying height they'd come upon outside the base of that leg - which was suspended farthest from the ground - all only accessed by that tiny porthole.

Martin could only watch from behind as Aviva, after great effort and wriggling, managed to pull her backpack off. She first slid Martin's gloves back to him, then put on her own. She then removed from the pack a grappling hook, and fastened it to the edge of their window. She quickly engineered a rudimentary pulley out of the conjoined rope and strung the backpack onto it, slowly lowering it to the seemingly unreachable ground below.

And unreachable it was. The backpack could not fully touch the bottom with the length of rope she had folded, but instead swung 20 feet above it. Reluctantly, she let the rope drop, hoping that the fall wasn't enough to break anything inside.

She turned to look at Martin over her shoulder. "Okay," she said, "here we go."

She spun around, and wormed her way out the opening, clutching the rope tightly as she hand-grip by hand-grip edged out of view. Martin crawled up to the exit point as quickly as he could. He pressed down onto the hook, trying to make sure it would stay in place for her, even though, of course, no one would be there to do it for him when it was his turn.

Eventually it was just too stressful to watch her harrowing descent, so he looked up at the landscape. Despite the circumstances, the view was phenomenal. They were about fifty feet above the ground, so Martin had a wide scope of surveillance. They were facing away from the mainland and out onto the Atlantic Ocean. The water was dark and churning smoothly, and seemed to go on for miles and miles, its breadth only interrupted by the sharp and blue-shaded icebergs that impaled up through it. The sky was a still and unanimous grey, but the air itself was subtly dynamic, thanks to the snow wafting down, which was so thin and light that it looked like glitter. Martin even held his breath for a brief time, not from the suspense of his friend taking on such a treacherous task, but because the landscape stole it away.

Martin felt the grappling hook jerk around a bit underneath his hand. For a quick moment he panicked, until he looked down and saw that Aviva had reached the bottom, and was pulling on the rope to signal to him.

Martin made his way down, facing the upheaved belly of the Tortuga. He tried not to think about it, about anything at all, as he lowered himself along the swaying chord.

Martin sighed with relief when he felt the snow crunch beneath his foot. It was so wonderful to finally stand on flat, even, open ground. He stretched his back and breathed deeply, then turned to smile at Aviva - but she wasn't even looking at him. Her hands were over her mouth, and she was turned at the Tortuga, towards the front right leg, or at least, where it should have been. It had been ripped off, and where it once was now was a tangle of twisted metal, broken pipes and the jagged remnants of its turquoise casing. Martin looked around, but he couldn't even see where the leg had gone.

"This...this is..." Aviva began to cry. Martin's big brother instincts kicked in, and he embraced her.

The Tortuga was her baby, her's and Koki's, but now it was just wreckage. It was really, truly disheartening for her, and she was stricken with a sudden and great grief. To see one of her greatest prides and joys mangled and battered, lying in the bleak and hopeless ice painfully broke the brave focus and determination she had maintained, but that was here and now so very much allowed. Martin had felt the same way a few hours earlier, when he woke in his chair just after the crash, and the first thing he saw was Chris far beneath him, unmoving, contorted, dashed into the corner of the fallen Tortuga, on a pile of glass.

He understood.

After a moment of quiet sobbing, she recovered and spoke. "I'm glad Koki didn't come out with us, she would've...we would've both cried."

"I would've hugged both of you." Martin said.

"Thank you, Martin."

Martin pulled away, feeling her own grip loosen.

"Okay." She continued, wiping her face. "Let's... look around."

"You want me to try and find the leg?" Martin asked.

"Yeah, I think that's a good idea." She said. "I'll go get a closer look at the socket, you just shout if... you spot _them_."

"Okay." He said. "Are you gonna be alright?" She nodded, mouthing "yeah," and headed towards the amputation.

Martin made his way around the Tortuga, his arms swinging wildly and his feet marching awkwardly, as one is wont to do when traversing snow. The Tortuga was up against a pretty sizable ridge, which explained its diagonal position. Martin reached the summit of the hill, and realized that the drop from the sunroof to the top of the mound actually wasn't as impossible or dangerous as Koki had predicted - in fact, he could even get up there himself from where he stood.

_And the opening in the sunroof is so big, we could even get a smaller vehicle out here to work on._ Martin thought. Then, he remembered what Koki said, something about how the cold would mess with the equipment. _So, this won't do us much good._

Meanwhile, Aviva examined the wound to the ship. It was dreadful, but also nonsensical. The metal mechanisms were all twisted one direction, but not a direction that was congruent with the way the ship had crash-landed. These big, dark, gash-like scuff marks on the snow indicated that the Tortuga hit the ground and slid for a bit, but the metal was all bent up towards the head, and not in the direction towards the skidding.

She then noticed something else peculiar. There was this liquid dripping along the curves and seams and scars. It didn't behave like anything she recognized, the closest thing it almost looked like was some weird cross between liquid mercury and slime, but only in movement, not so much in the way it was reflecting and refracting light. It was clearly metallic, but also very dark, almost black as night. She remembered she had put a few water bottles in her backpack, including one that was almost empty. She pulled it out, chugged the rest of it, and then scooped up some of the strange fluid. _Well, we'll see what you are later._

Martin was not engaged in such delicate scientific work. He had climbed up on the sunroof, and was kicking at the big ring of remaining glass, breaking off big chunks of it, and tossing what he could catch off to the side. He had decided that the sunroof was going to be an easier and safer way in and out of the ship than the vents and perilous rope climb, so long as there weren't all these jagged edges. His attention was caught, however, when far below him, the hangar door was wrenched open. Jimmy emerged. He didn't see Martin, but began gingerly making his way towards the cluttered mess that was beneath him.

Martin hollered Jimmy's name, waving his hands in the air. Jimmy looked up and, from what Martin could tell at that distance, was quite surprised.

"Martin?" He shouted. "How'd you get up there?"

"There's a hill!" Martin shouted back.

"What?" Jimmy shouted.

_"I SAID THERE'S A HILL!"_

"OH! OKAY! THAT'S GREAT! WHAT'S IT LIKE OUT THERE?"

"WHAT?"

_Wait a minute_, Jimmy thought, _I can get up to the loft, then we won't have to shout._

So Jimmy went over to the ladder and climbed it, and found himself only five feet beneath Martin.

"So what's the situation out there?" Jimmy asked.

"Well, whoever's responsible doesn't seem to he here anymore."

"If someone else is responsible, and it wasn't just my fault." He said, glumly.

"Jimmy we're missing a leg." Martin said. "I doubt you did that."

"What?" Jimmy exclaimed. "Which one?"

"Front right." Said Martin.

"But..." Jimmy said, "wait a minute, right before we started falling that's the engine that went offline! You don't think... was it ripped off midair?"

Before Martin could reply to this revelation, Koki burst through the hangar door, her brows distinctly knitted and her whole body tense. "Jimmy! Jimmy, we've got to get Aviva and... Martin?" She noticed Martin, he waved. "Huh, I guess we can use the sunroof then, well, that's besides the point!" She hurried over to them.

Martin would have given some gloating smile, but he was caught off guard by her agitated demeanor, and became worried that something had happened to Chris.

"What's happened?" Martin asked as she emerged from the ladder-hole.

"Martin, go grab Aviva and get in here, we found a feather!"

"A feather?" Jimmy said. "But that means-"

"_Bird powers._" Martin finished. "We can go get help!"

"Chris is trying to identify it right now," said Koki, "but whatever it is, it's our ticket out of here."

"Okay, give me a second." Martin turned and jumped off the roof and onto the snow. He started to race down the ridge, but he had to halt himself before crashing into Aviva, who was apparently climbing up to join him. She stepped back trying to avoid the big shower of dry snow stirred up by his sudden stop.

"Martin! Did you find the foot?" Aviva asked.

"What? No, well, I found out we can get to the sunroof, so, I was removing glass, and-"

"Oh, good thinking, Martin!" She said. "Maybe we can get a vehicle out h-"

"Koki found a feather!" Martin cut her off.

She took a moment, standing there, eyes wide, as she let this tiding turn in her mind like a sweet scent. It's hard to quite put into words the nature and magnitude of the relief that came over her. All the fear and despair that came before it was not forgotten, nor rectified. It was a wonderful hope that pulled her out from the pits of darkness, even if that darkness still remained. After all, there were so many bitter concerns, about where the foot was, and who would do such a thing, how they did it, and why, and she had no doubt the answers to these questions would be disturbing and the very least. But at least they now had a way to recover and fight back.

"Alright." She said finally, "Let's go."


	3. 3

Chris twirled the feather between his fingers. It was like a lone dancer, sweeping along some quiet melody as an unrelenting and loyal spotlight enveloped her. Captive, he watched her solo, though one could argue she had back-up dancers in the speckled dust, floating silently around her. Though her movements were so carefully minimalistic, her dress was airy, soft, fluid, downy, locked into no routine but the whims of the air that held her. Her white skirt was indeed wayward, but the bodice was more stiff, striped and brown, conforming to the quill it clasped. Chris couldn't even wonder how long she had sat backstage, deposited there from the heavens by the body of her full bird, as so transfixed was he on her movements.

When Martin and Aviva entered, he did not look up; he only continued to turn the feather in the amber light. Only when one of those new audience members spoke was the show's spell interrupted, and the curtains closed.

"What have we got, Chris?" Asked Martin, squatting down next to him.

"Peregrine falcon." Chris replied.

"That's fantastic!" Aviva exclaimed.

"Is it though?" Asked Chris, finally looking up, squinting his eyes as if he were coming out of a dim theatre, and having readjusting to the harsh light of the rest of the venue. "Peregrine falcons are found on every continent _except_ this one. They aren't cold weather birds."

"We're just going to fly somewhere to get help," Martin pointed out, "we're not living here. And with peregrine powers, it'll be super quick!"

Chris frowned. "A peregrine falcon can only reach those speeds when it flies high up into the sky and takes a dive. The air here is two cold and thin to do that! We'd just be gliding at regular falcon speed, maybe even slower, if we have to deal with headwinds."

"I know, I know." Said Martin.

"Jimmy, where's the nearest outpost?" Aviva asked.

"Oh, well, uh," said Jimmy, "really there's two options."

"They're both close?"

"Well, that's the thing." Said Jimmy. "There's one that's much closer than the other, but it's only occupied sometimes, and right now is its off season. The other one is active year round, but it's about three times as far away."

"How far, exactly?" She asked.

"Hold on, give me a sec." Jimmy sprinted off. The team waited for a few minutes in silence, before he returned with a map book. He flipped through it for a bit, then held it open on the page he'd chosen against the wall, with everyone but Chris crowding around him from behind, and Aviva shining a flashlight on it over his shoulder.

"Let's see, we're about here..." he said, pointing on the map, "so the closer one is about 100 miles southwest of us, the other maybe 350 to the west." He showed where those were too.

"Woof." Said Martin. "Even at top speed either one would take at least an hour."

"That's what I'm saying!" Chris said, though his sudden, agitated interjection was swiftly followed with a heaved yelp.

Martin returned to his brother's side. Chris was right, of course, the plan was super risky. But Chris was also injured, and as shown more and more clearly, desperately so. If they waited, prodded, dallied around for a perfect solution, who knows how worse things could get? A fractured rib is not a static injury, at least, as far as Martin could tell, this one wouldn't be: from what he had learned during his brief time thinking he'd be a veterinarian, and from how the bone felt to him when he first inspected it - there was just something about the direction the fracture was going, the way it moved when he had touched it, that made him worry that it was destined to worsen, and cause significant internal damage if left untended to, and... well, Martin didn't want to think about what could come next.

"I don't know if we have another choice." Said Martin.

Chris said nothing, as he attempted to regain his breath.

"So then, which outpost do we go to?" Aviva asked.

"Well the closer won't do us much good if it's empty." Martin said.

"Not necessarily." Jimmy replied. "It's going to have a line of communication with the other facility, we can radio in for help."

"And if we go with the closer one, we can get that message across sooner!" Said Koki. "That's the obvious move right there."

"What country runs it?" Aviva asked.

"The year-round one? It's Russian." Said Jimmy.

"Yikes." She said. "That could make for a serious communication problem."

"Like...maybe?" said Jimmy, "'SOS' is a pretty universal message. There's no language barrier for coordinates, either, and that's all they'd need. If not, I'll bet someone there has to know English."

"Okay, then, we're all in agreement?" said Aviva. The team nodded. "Who's going to go?"

"I will, obviously." Said Martin.

"Okay, who else?" She asked, and turned to Koki. "It's gonna be you or me."

Jimmy shifted uncomfortably. He was not alright with the thought of flying out into the cold, but he also hated feeling so useless.

"Yeah, well, the thing is," Martin began, rising to his feet, "Aviva, you and Koki have the best chance of fixing the vehicles, maybe even getting some of the Tortuga's functions back online, just in case this plan doesn't work." Martin didn't want to add why that may be, as to not coat the case he was making with the possibility of him dying. "And we're not making Jimmy do this, or Chris, obviously. So, it's me."

Everyone was silent.

"Martin... just you?" Aviva asked.

"Yeah, pretty much." Said Martin.

"No." Said Chris, tensing up tremendously, both from the thought of the plan, and the pain, which was slowly but surely extending into a wider area across his torso. "No, no, no, I don't like that. You can't be out there by yourself! What if you run into the bad guys? They brought down this ship, who knows how."

"They tore off a leg." Aviva said quietly. "With this, probably." She reached into her backpack and pulled out the water bottle with the strange black liquid in it. Everyone gawked at it with confusion and fear.

"See? Now, that just proves my point!" Chris continued from the floor. "If they can do that, what do you think they could do with you? Let's not forget, too, this is _Antarctica_, if the villains don't get you, the cold certainly will!"

"And what do you think adding an extra person to the party will do for that, other than just giving you guys less options if something _does_ go wrong?" Martin snapped back. "You really think having someone else there gives me better odds against people who brought down the Tortuga? You think an extra person makes me less likely to freeze to death?"

Martin stopped realizing that Chris had stopped listening, and was just gasping in pain. He knelt back down and grabbed Chris' hands, apologizing and asking if he was okay under his breath. Chris shot him a frightened, near glazed expression, but nodded weakly. Martin got a knot in his stomach, hoping that he hadn't aggravated the injury by getting Chris worked up.

Aviva came up from behind and put her hand on his back. "Martin, we can't afford to lose you over that assuption. You're not going alone, that's the end of it." He could feel her hand tense. "I thought you knew better than that by now."

Martin got flashes. _Rain. Wires. An airfield, a basement. A smartphone, sliding across a bar to him._ Aviva was right, but Martin couldn't help thinking...

Was it the right thing to do?

"Look." Koki chimed in. "We are in no condition to make a decision this big. It's late, we've all been through a lot. Let's just wrap it up for now and decide in the morning with fresh minds."

"We're gonna wait?" Martin asked.

"Do you want to fly through Antarctica at night?" She asked back. Martin said nothing, even though, down here, the hours of night actually have no effect on the visibility or temperature of things. Actually, there were a lot of good points he could be making, and a lot of things he was certainly convinced of, but he held his tongue, thinking it best not to perpetuate the argument.

"Well then," Aviva said, with a slightly cynical smile, "let's get ready for bed."

.

.

.

Jimmy searched the ship for food, and the crew sparingly ate from what was found without glass in it, and set the leftovers in the main chamber, as the cold, intruding air excellently replaced the refrigerators that had been destroyed. Everyone gathered every blanket, tarp, and sleeping bag they could, beat the glass out of them (though into the Tortuga, and not out into the snow, on the off chance than penguins might wander the area and be endangered by the shards) and piled them all together in a corner where the crew would try to sleep, hoping their combined body heat and collection of covers would be enough to sustain them through the freezing night. Aviva even had the good fortune of finding a working heated blanket, which was given to Chris, as he had to sleep on the edge of the pile, to make sure that everything's weight would not exacerbate his affliction.

The night was miserable. Everyone was cold, uncomfortable, and anxious. They tossed and turned, each time creating an upheaval that disturbed anyone else next to them. Often one would be very close to drifting off, only to be shot back awake by a worried thought or harsh shiver rocketing through them. It was further difficult to try and be at ease when the sounds that dominated were the ominous, deep groaning of the collapsed Tortuga, and Chris' labored, raspy breathing. Martin couldn't even bring himself to do so much as to shut his eyes, out of fear that something terrible might happen while he was asleep.

They of course had decided to keep vigil in turns. One would rise, and sit outside the shattered sunroof, atop the fallen ship, where they would remain for two hours, before lowering themselves, waking their successor, and taking their turn in the center of the pile, to banish the effects of the harsh cold they just endured. It was an unpleasant undertaking, for many reasons.

This time of year, the sun over Antarctica does not set, so the constant daylight was agitating for the exhausted mind, and now that the clouds had parted, it was as an unavoidable, unrelenting plague. The quiet hours spent alone were near maddening. Every shadow caught out of the corner of an eye was cause for alarm, only to reveal itself upon direct inspection to be no more dangerous than its observer's own paranoia. The roaring of the ocean rang like memories of gunfire in a haunted soldier's mind, as, even without turning to see its source, those drones were a constant, hovering reminder of their past terror and current isolation. The cold was indescribable. Faces burned as if they had been plunged into fire. One can only imagine the torments suffered by those frozen in the lake of treachery, in the deepest pits of Dante's hell, but these poor souls came close to that knowledge. It was a lengthy occupation of silent suffering, with nothing of note to come from it.

Well, there was one thing.

The southern lights were visible, lashing up the cruel bright sky with their arrhythmic green and pink dance. Each member on watch had their own take on the display, which impacted how they felt throughout the rest of the night.

Jimmy was the first to take watch, and saw those lights as a mockery of his situation. Here was this jovial sky, with no worry in the world, who could dance carelessly over his shameful failure. What right had it to be beautiful, lovely, peaceful, remarkable, at such a remarkably horrible time? If it wanted to truly impress him, it could carry their plea to those people far away, and save them the trouble. Instead, it flaunted how above-it-all it really was, how small and pathetic he was, how stuck they all were. He was glad he would not have to take on the powers of the Peregrine; he did not want to rise down to the level of the heavens, in all its pompous indifference. Of course, it may be unfair to direct such harsh accusations at a helpless light-show in the sky, but better to cast judgement at that than someone else, or himself.

Aviva was next to stand guard, and saw it as a sympathetic gesture on the part of the universe, maybe even an apology. In her eyes it waved over the Tortuga like a memorial flag, like all of nature was mourning the tragedy, and offering condolences, hope, even. It was a pleasant thought, and helped her sail over the snares telling her _that won't do much good for getting out of this mess._

Martin followed. While he knew what was to come would not be fun, he was glad to get out of the hangar, where all he could do was wait, lying awake, heart frightened and mind burdened. He of course checked in with Chris before he left, just to make sure he was alright, even though he did feel a little guilty for disturbing him. Chris was so weary, and could hardly get a word out, though whether that was from sleepiness or pain Martin couldn't tell.

_This has to be done._

He was absolutely blown away by this beauty of nature, her multicolored plumes dancing around him, demanding he be fully in awe of the spectacle. It gave him a different kind of hope, one for moving forward, one to reaffirm that the planet was good, and wonderful, and worth protecting, worth preserving, far more so than any other cause he could think of. It's why they were all here, and why they would all continue, no matter what opposition they might face. It was for her, the planet, her, the oceans, her, the endless sky. It also gave him a last, brief connection to his crew below. They had seen this, too, and, without knowing their thoughts, Martin assumed they all basked in it as much as he.

But Chris wouldn't get to see it. He was held down below by a great wound, a vile harm thrust upon him, that would only linger and grow. What good did basking do?

Martin reached into his pocket.

_They'll be so pissed. I don't blame them. But being mad is better than being dead._

Martin had thought about it all night as he waited for his turn. How Chris was in such peril. How Jimmy was in over his head. How the girls were too important. What he needed to do.

There the lone dancer stood and flickered, she seemed so small compared to the landscape around her, but she stood firm as the star, as the tragic artist, as the main event. It was the performance of her life, maybe of her death, out upon the coldest, harshest stage in the known world. The reception, the backlash, could be tremendous. But what may be preserved was unquestionable.

Was it a difficult decision? Absolutely. It was too dangerous, but so was waiting around, and so was leaving the Tortuga unguarded. Every possible option overflowed with potential danger, but there was one thing that his choice had that was different. At least this way, the danger was only his, and not everyone else's.

He had decided. Aviva and Chris were right, but this was, in fact, the right thing to do.

Koki never got the chance to take her turn at the post, or to have the southern lights to herself, as she was never woken or summoned. The rooftop was now completely unoccupied, save for the dancer herself, who alone rested on the roof of a restless ship, watching as, once again, a full bird left her behind, flying off into the wilds of Antarctica.

Martin had left to get help.


	4. 4

Chris was having the strangest dream. He was back in his bunk bed, but without any of the warmth and comfort he knew it should have; everything felt imbalanced and ominous, and Chris himself was disoriented, addled, and confused. Was he home ill? Had something happened? Nothing was quite explainable. Things were cold, and strange, and frightening. He might have thought he could hear the ladder creaking, but it more seemed like the whole room groaned. The bed shifted and breathed around him like an primordial, hell-spawned mass, as if he were enveloped in a living and malicious ooze, and instead of anything being illuminated by a gentle early morning sun filtering through soft curtains, it was all dark, dark, dark.

It was not the blue eyes, this time, that he recognized of his brother, but his silhouette, hovering over him.

"Chris. Are you alright?" Came down that familiar voice, through a filter of half-asleep distortion.

"Mmmm... I guess." He sighed.

"I'm... leaving. I wanted to tell at least someone."

"Are you...late?" Chris asked, not really processing what was being said.

"I'm so sorry, Chris," he whispered "and... you can totally rub it in my face after. You're right, you always are, but... I have to get help!"

"Sure you do." Chris mumbled, still thinking he was in a dream. He felt a warm hand place itself softly on his forward.

"Just... take care of everyone if something happens, okay?" Martin said. "Between the two of us, you always were the responsible one."

Martin's outline faded into the rest of the darkness.

.

.

.

The Peregrine Falcon suit was absolutely not suited for cold weather. About thirty minutes into his flight, Martin was already shivering to his core. His wings were nearly numb, but he fortunately had enough muscle memory to maintain his altitude and trajectory.

Martin had stolen Jimmy's map book, so he knew where he was going. He felt terrible, he felt terrible for everything, but it was at least a different kind of terrible from what he felt just sitting, waiting in the belly of the Tortuga, dreading what would happen to Chris, to everyone, if they were left behind with only one suit-user to protect them. I say again, he felt terrible, but at least he felt productive.

It was a surreal journey to make far above the vast white desert. If he stared at the snow too long he was stricken with minor hallucinations, more like optical illusions, of shaking, wavering light sloshing around in tiny, psychedelic patterns. Staring up at the sky just made his neck hurt. It was the most devoid of life he had ever seen anywhere; normally in a sandy desert he could have at least spotted a lizard or a bird or a bug or two, especially with Peregrine powers, but here there was just..._nothing_. No penguins or seals or other sea-birds, just an endless expanse of white.

He would have to land every once and awhile, to rest his wings and clumsily check the map. With this and the slower speeds Chris had correctly predicted, it all took about 2 hours.

2 hours until it came into view. It started as a black dot on the horizon, then, as he approached, grew into an actual complex, his destination, a wonderful source of relief.

It was very modestly sized. There were about three buildings in total; one was a bright red cabin about the size of a typical suburban mansion, and the other two were pale and grey in color, both one story, the first being made of wood, and the second being metal with no windows. There was a radio tower, and a satellite dish, and some storage units, but not much else. It appeared completely uninhabited; all vehicle tracks were nonexistent, and nothing stirred - well, Martin thought he saw a dark shadow move in one of the windows of that smaller wooden cabin, but he chalked it up to being a trick of the imagination, the fantasies of a weary mind.

He crashed into the epicenter of the structures. He decided that, since the radio tower was right next to it, the largest building was most likely to contain the communications room. He hobbled over to it, looking quite ungraceful, as a Peregrine Falcon would in Antarctica. As exposed as it made him feel, he had to eventually deactivate. He felt warmer back in his regular human body, thanks to all those layered clothes that did not cross over into bird form, but he was now quite defenseless, especially since he had left the feather behind for the crew to use in case of an emergency. However, it was all for the very simple fact that he had to open up the door, or a window, or a vent on the roof, or whatever was available, which a falcon cannot do.

To his surprise, the first thing he tried to open, which was the front door, was unlocked.

He was struck with instant shock and disgust.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me." He said aloud.

There, sitting in a metal chair beneath a coat rack, wrapped in a blanket like a child, with a bowl of soup in his lap, conspicuously not surrounded by a gang of ridiculous looking robots, was Zach Varmitech.

"Wild rat!" He exclaimed, as surprised as Martin, if not more so. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Oh, well, you know, I didn't really have anywhere else to go after you _blew us out of the sky!_" Martin growled, his fists balling up.

"Blew you out of the sky? Are you trying to be annoying, or crazy? I didn't know you guys were here! I was promised you wouldn't even show up!"

"Of course we'd show up! We always show up, because you put innocent animals in danger! Fuh! And I'm the one who's crazy."

"Just get out! Go find your own abandoned outpost, this one is _mine_."

"Whatever, I don't have time for this." Martin blew past Zach, moving towards a hallway.

"Don't ignore me!" Zach snapped. "Hey! HEY! GET BACK HERE!" Martin kept walking. "Don't make me sick my new friends on you!"

Martin stopped, and turned around. "New friends?"

"I'll do it!" Zach grabbed a walkie-talkie that was sitting next to him. "NORA! AXEL! Get in here, there's a wild r-"

The door slammed open, and in burst two strangers in dark coats.

"We saw him fly in." Said the first, a man who sounded like he might be a Kiwi, who Martin assumed to be Axel. He was very angular, even with his puffy snow coat on, he had no roundness to him whatsoever. He pulled down his hood to reveal a garish and unkempt mohawk.

"So, wild rat," said Zach, grinning childishly wickedly, "meet my new friends! They're _super_ tough, and are gonna mop the floor with your stupid face!" He laughed, almost as if this were a game of threats on a playground.

"Aw, I thought we had killed all of these guys." Said the second stranger, who was a woman, and thus had to be Nora. She too dropped her hood, and raised her snow goggles, revealing a loose and uncontrolled top knot, and an intense, wild, almost crazed pair of eyes. She gave off an air of gleeful cruelty.

"Oh, that was you?" Martin said, slowly backing away.

"What? You guys didn't tell me you'd attack the Wild Kratts!" Zach snapped. "Ugh, I thought we were communicating."

"I didn't think you would need to know." Nora said. Her inflection was soft, light, weirdly sensual, which just freaked Martin out, even more so when she continued, as her voice became harsh and cackling, like she had transformed into a hag. "Oh well, I guess we'll just have to squash this one."

"Hey, I don't think that's necessary." He laughed nervously, his hands up in a defensive position.

"Oh, I don't do things that are necessary." She said. Suddenly, there was this humming noise, and sprouting from her back was the strangest thing he had ever seen. It was a massive plume of this shiny black liquid that moved and levitated unnaturally, almost like she was controlling it with her mind. "I do things that are _fun_."

Martin had the quick realization of _that's the stuff Aviva showed us, she's the one who ripped off the leg, and she could probably easily rip me in half,_ and he turned and bolted. He could hear her laughing behind him.

_Radio room, radio room, I have to find a radio room_. He guessed it would be near the radio tower, so he sprinted in that general direction. Finally, he found it, nearly sliding right by it. He rushed in, locked the door, propped a chair up against it, and then quickly proceeded to the radio equipment. He skimmed the charts that were out on the table, which showed what frequency settings were needed for which base. Thankfully, the outpost he needed to reach was already calibrated for. He booted up the system, and began his call.

"Hello? Hello, is anyone there?"

"Привет?" Came back through.

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

"кто ты, что делаешь? этот аванпост должен быть пустым."

"You've got to help me! SOS, uh..." his heart was beating very fast, he was having a hard time focusing. "My aircraft crashed, at, uh..." he pulled out the map book, and opened to a page where Jimmy had scribbled their coordinates down. "73 2' 0.502" S, and, uh, 60 49' 6.567" W. People are injured, please hurry!"

"продолжай говорить! Я записываю это. Питер! найди Егора, он говорит по английски!" Martin also heard a faint "Я сделаю это!" From someone else.

The door began to be banged upon quite violently. "Hello, little boy, are you in here? Come out, come out!" He heard Nora taunt.

"We... we were attacked by two people, their names are Nora and Axel! They're here, outside, they're trying to get in, and, uh, there's also-"

The door was broken open so forcefully that the chair he had propped up was snapped into splinters. Before he could even turn or react, Martin was instantly grabbed from behind and pulled backwards by his feet, his chin slamming on the table and then on the floor.

A "Привет? Ты еще там? что происходит?" came from the now unattended radio box, and Martin, dazed, trying to get up, heard a loud crashing sound over him - when he looked up, he saw that the radio had been smashed to bits. Pieces of metal and plastic flew everywhere, with one sliver even smacking him in the eye.

He could feel a dense, heavy pressure wrapped around his ankles, and he was stuck in a position not unlike the top of a push-up, but that even was quickly lost, as he was engulfed to the shoulders and lifted up, his arms folded and pinned against his chest by that black _stuff_ that flowed out of her.

"So, are you the only one who survived, or are there others?" She asked. Martin said nothing. "Oh well, you won't be a survivor for long."

The liquid's grasp became tighter and tighter, crushing him, god only knows how, Martin certainly didn't, all he could do was try to squirm and twist around until all the air had been squeezed from his lungs, the grip becoming more and more fierce with each panicked heartbeat that pounded inside him.

Zach was in the doorway. While he was not keen on watching a man get constricted to death, he certainly didn't care to stop it. He averted his eyes. "Goodbye, Martin." Was all he said.

But at the sound of his name, Nora stopped. She dropped her captive gasping onto the floor, and turned to face Zach.

"Wait... _what did you say his name was again_? Martin Kratt... of course, why didn't I put the pieces together?" Her black liquid disappeared, slipping into an opening in her coat.

Martin, in the split but crucial second where he was recovered, saw the opportunity he was presented and took it, tackling Nora and knocking her to the ground. This advantage was short-lived however, as Axel came up out of nowhere, and kicked Martin in the collar bone, throwing him off of her. He lay stunned out on the floor, and Nora, furious, re-summoned her arm of fluid and pinned him to the ground, enough so to keep him from moving, but not so much that he was being crushed again.

"Martin Kratt..." she hissed through her gritted teeth. "You have no clue _how lucky you are__._ I would have pulverized you by now, were it not for my friend," she leaned in to whisper in his ear, "who knows you, and hates you, and is _dying_ to see you again."

Martin had a witty response in his head, but when he tried to say it he just wordlessly wheezed, so his attempt at humor as a coping mechanism backfired, only making him even more distressed.

"This isn't a good idea." Axel said. "Just kill him now."

"But think of how much _fun_ this is going to be." She protested.

"It's not worth it. We don't want another one of your side-projects to get in the way."

"Oh, you can keep going with your stuff. I'll take care of this." She smiled evilly.

The blackness moved up and covered his face, smothering him. He tried anew to wriggle away, but the grip was too tight, and all he accomplished was, in vain, using up that precious energy he had left, which faded fast. Martin blacked out.

.

.

.

Chris woke up to the sound of Koki's voice.

"What time is it? What time is it??"

Everyone else was stirring slowly, but she was bolted upright, searching around desperately. "Where's the timer? What time is it?"

Because the hangar was so dark, Chris did not have a good impression as to what time of the day it was. To him, to everyone, Koki was just anxious about her upcoming shift.

"Aw, man, I had just fallen asleep, too." Groaned Jimmy.

"Koki, relax, it's -" Aviva checked her watch and gasped. "Oh my god, it's 8:00 in the morning!"

Koki bolted up out of the pile. "Where's Martin? He should've woken me up four hours ago!" She sprinted towards the doors. Chris began to stir as well, starting to get up, but the dull aching in his chest that had persisted through the night suddenly flared up, more harshly and sharply than it had before. Chris began hacking and coughing, and Aviva assumed he had just started to panic.

"Chris! Chris, it's okay, just breathe slowly." She said. "He probably fell asleep or something."

"_Out there in the cold!?"_ Chris cried. If he wasn't panicking before, he was now.

"Uh-" Aviva, realizing her mistake, turned to Jimmy. "Jimmy, could you go get us a paper bag?"

Before Jimmy could, Chris settled down.

"Good, that's great Chris. You're doing great." She said.

"I'm fine." Chris insisted, though the fear in his eyes said otherwise. Aviva was starting to agree with Martin, that perhaps Chris' injury was not something they could wait on.

Koki burst back inside. "Martin's gone!" She cried. "He's just...gone!"

"_What?"_ Aviva rose. "Was he anywhere outside?"

"Not that I saw." Koki said. "I looked all around though, from the top of the Tortuga."

"Jimmy, help me up." Chris said through gritted teeth.

"What?" Said Jimmy.

"_Help me up_."

"I don't think that is a good idea." Jimmy said.

"Yeah, no, Chris, just stay there, okay? That's the best thing you can do." Said Aviva, turning back to face Chris.

"I can't!" He said. He tried to get up, but of course stopped, screamed, and fell back down, everyone rushing to his side, both to make sure he was okay, and prevent his second attempt at rising. "I can't, we... we have to find Martin!"

"_We_ will, Chris." Aviva said sternly. "You can't do him any good like this. Just stay there."

"What if he got taken, what if he-" Chris began coughing again, but Aviva put her hand on his shoulder and shushed him until he slowed back down.

"Just stay here, okay?" She said. "Please. He wouldn't want you getting hurt either."

Chris nodded.

"We can search for him with Peregrine powers!" Koki said.

"Okay, Jimmy grab the feather." Aviva said.

"It's... not here." Said Jimmy.

"What?"

"The feather's gone."

"But where did..._Martin_!" Aviva turned from concerned to furious. "Martin, of all the half-witted, irresponsible - ugh!"

"Wait, you don't think he-" Koki said.

"I absolutely do." Said Aviva.

"What?" Asked Jimmy. "What did he do?"

"Martin went to get help. Alone. I should've known this would happen!"

"And he took the feather with him?" Koki asked.

"Maybe, I don't know." She said. "That doesn't seem like something he would do. We have to go find it, though!" Everyone nodded except for Chris.

_Martin left. He really left. Was that what the dream was about? Was it even a dream at all?_

Chris felt so helpless. Martin was out there somewhere, trying to save everyone, risking his own neck so thoroughly. There was the crew, with so little to do about it, still so desperate to make things right. And here was Chris, no good to anybody, because of that stupid, stupid broken rib. At least, that's what they told him, right? He had heard that broken ribs were pretty minor injuries, that they could even heal on their own, even if they would hurt like hell in the meantime. So, maybe it was up to him? Maybe if he gritted his teeth and pushed through the pain, he could actually do something, he could help, he could-

Chris moved a third time to stand up. It was the farthest he'd gotten so far, but without anyone to support him, and the jabbing pain making him lose control over his own movements, he bent over forward. Before anyone could turn around, rush to him, catch him, it was too late. Now Martin's fears were proven true as well.

Chris' broken rib had punctured his lung. He collapsed, gasping horribly and emptily for air. Everyone rushed to be around him, but their faces, their cries, he couldn't take in; everything blurred. All he heard, all he felt, was the grinding in his own chest, all he knew was hopeless groping for air.

Chris too blacked out.


	5. 5

"What's happened to him?" Jimmy cried, and, again, "what's happened?"

The crew was, as carefully as they could, carrying Chris into the main floor, where they could at least see him in consistent and usable light. They lay him along the corner of the center console, where Jimmy had been several hours earlier, when he was unconscious.

"I think his lung's collapsed." Said Aviva, trembling.

"Oh, god." Said Jimmy. "What do we do?"

"I don't know!"

"There has to be something!"

"I don't _know_!" She snapped. "We don't have the medical equipment to deal with this kind of injury, we don't have power, we don't have Martin, we're _laying_ on our side, in the cold, here _all alone_. I don't know what we're gonna do!"

Jimmy flinched, and stared in stunned silence.

Koki stepped in. "Well, in a weird way then I'm glad Martin went to get help."

"But we don't know," Aviva continued, maintaining her paroxysm, "if Martin made it _anywhere_ without dying! We have nothing to do, now, but wait around for Chris to die too!"

By this point, everyone had tears.

"You can't say that!" Koki said. "What about the feather? Martin must have left it behind! We can use it to-"

"To do what? Carry Chris somewhere? Do you know how long that would take? Too long, it would take _too long_."

"We can't give up!" Said Koki, as firmly as she could.

"I don't want to!" Aviva sobbed. "I just don't know what we can do!"

Koki knew. She grabbed Aviva, and hugged her. Jimmy joined in as well. Maybe it wasn't the most productive thing, but everyone, standing all together, felt ready, at peace, even if it was for the end.

But you know as well as I, this cannot be the end.

Jimmy was the first to pull away from the hug, drawn out by a strange anomaly, summoning him like the hypnotic tune of a piper.

"Do you guys hear that?" He asked.

It was a heavy droning, an industrial sound, marked by occasional metallic clunks but enveloped in a constant baritone rumble. It was increasing in volume, obviously coming from an approaching source, or, two, as became more evident the closer the noise became.

"Who is that?" Aviva said, quietly. They all looked at each other, uncertain if the new arrival was friend or foe. Everyone's heart skipped a beat when, one closely after the other, the noises stopped. No one dared move towards the sunroof, and instead, stiffly and silently, moved into a protective circle around the still gasping Chris.

They could hear car doors and snow crunches. They could hear clear voices, all of them male, however, the words themselves could not be distinguished at that distance. But these people were clearly walking at the Tortuga, and sooner or later, the nature of the new arrivals had to come out.

"как нам попасть внутрь?" Were the first clear words that came through.

Aviva's face lit up. Koki sighed deeply. Jimmy leapt in the air, cheering, "It's the Russians! It's the Russians, we're saved!"

While Aviva rested her head on Koki's shoulder in relief, Jimmy sprinted up to the sunroof and out through it, whooping and waving his hands in the air. There were ten or so of them, all covered head to toe in snow gear, and they had come in two large, orange, continuously-tracked trucks. They too waved their arms upon spotting Jimmy. One sprinted ahead, and spoke in English, but with a heavy Russian accent.

"Hello! We got your comrade's message! Are there injured?"

"We've got a guy with a collapsed lung!" Jimmy shouted back. The Russian man turned and shouted towards everyone else.

"получить носилки!"

One of the people just poking out of the truck's door gave a thumbs up, and disappeared back into the truck, only to exit back out completely, and begin running, dragging a stretcher behind them.

"How do we get inside, my friend?" Asked the Russian man.

"Through here's the best option!" Jimmy hollered back.

"Hmmm. That may be difficult for your friend. Can you lower him to us?"

"Probably!" Jimmy said, "give me a second!" He hopped back inside, and practically slid down to the others, in such rushed excitement that he barely even noticed various shards of glass as he was approaching and after he got them lodged in his hands. "We gotta lower Chris down to them. They've got a stretcher for him."

"Let's grab a tarp." Koki said. She and Aviva ran off to the hangar, to pull one out of the pile they'd slept in. Jimmy went up to Chris.

"Hey, Chris! We're gonna be okay! Martin did it! The Russians are here!"

Chris said nothing, only continuing to wheeze. He did actually stir a bit, and shakily looked at Jimmy, though his expression did not connote that he had any understanding of what was going on. He looked as pained and frightened as ever.

The girls emerged with a tarp, and spread it out in the air. Jimmy, after skirting around a bit to try and find the right angle, lifted Chris, grimacing as his friend let out one massive, empty, startled gasp. He placed Chris on the tarp, continuing to clutch the underside as the girls maintained the corners. The group carefully edged their way down the slope.

Getting Chris up to the loft and out the sunroof was a different matter, and required a lot of frustrating rearrangement, awkward positions, and strained, choking sounds that had to be ignored. Finally, they got up to the sunroof, and lowered him carefully down to the people below, who placed him on their stretcher. The man said, "посадите его в грузовик и отправляйтесь на аванпост." And they ran off to the truck.

The rest of the crew, with great elation, leapt down out of the Tortuga. Aviva hugged the nearest Russian; he was caught a bit off guard, and didn't reciprocate, but just let it happen, not really knowing what else to do.

"I am Pyotr, I am in charge." Said the man who could speak English. "Your friend will be okay. He is with Snezhana, she is a good doctor."

"That's a relief." Aviva said.

"We must go to the outpost. The drive is long, and here is cold."

"Wait, what about Martin?" Aviva asked. "He's with you guys, right?"

Pyotr frowned. "I... don't think he is alright."

"What?" Aviva cried. "Why not?"

"We received his call, but he was scared. He said the guys who attacked you were there, then there was screaming, and it cut off."

A black cloud of fear covered the brief spot of sun that was their rescue, and they stood horrified, unable to say anything in response. They sank right back into that miserable hopelessness, even as the first truck pulled away, carrying Chris to safety.

"Do you know who it was?" Pyotr continued. "This... Nora and Axel?"

"The... who?" Aviva asked.

"The people who attacked. Those were names he gave himself, he said they did it."

She shook her head sadly. "No, no, I have no idea who those are. I've never heard those names."

Pyotr let out a thoughtful hum. "I've sent armed men to that outpost, they will report when we meet." He reached out his hand, "for now, Госпожа, we must leave."

Reluctantly, Aviva took it, and was lead to the remaining truck, the rest of the crew following behind sadly.

They were safe, but what had become of Martin? What would they tell Chris? What could they do?

As everyone else boarded the vehicle, Aviva turned to get one last look at the Tortuga.

There was her life's work, dead in the snow, sitting like a tombstone, a ruin, a corpse all at once. Its windows were dark, its head was limp, its belly exposed to the biting winds. They could come back for it. They could rebuild it.

But she remembered how excited the brothers were when it was first finished. When it reached its final weeks of development she had hidden it away from them, so it would be a surprise. That reveal to them, their reactions, when the Tortuga was unveiled, was priceless. The two just broke into ecstatic laughter, clinging to each other and jumping around giddily, with the biggest smiles on their faces and brightest sparkles in their eyes. They were like children in a playground, running up and down the floors, chattering endlessly about all the possibilities, of course getting an introduction from the girls about what they could and couldn't touch. At the end of it all, Martin had picked Aviva up off her feet in an enormous embrace and twirled her around. When she was set down she asked him if he liked it. Continuing to hug her, he had said, "It's perfect. I _love_ it." And then, after a few more seconds of hugging, sighed, and whispered, "_Thank you, so much_."

She had never met someone quite like Martin. His drive, passion, energy for the world, for life, for other lives of all kinds, was unparalleled, and downright inspiring. She had wanted to make a difference in the world too, just as he did, but she never quite knew how until she met him. He was a goofball, maybe irresponsible, oftentimes a pain in the ass, but if it weren't for him, or his brother, there would be no Wild Kratts. There would be no Tortuga.

And now, there wasn't. The Tortuga was dead, and both of the brothers were out of commission, one from a terribly injury, and the other in order to save the rest.

_They could come back to the Tortuga. They could rebuild it. But without Martin, without the brothers, was there a reason to?_

Aviva turned away.

She climbed into the truck, and it pulled off, leaving the Tortuga to sit in the snow.

.

.

.

Martin woke. His head was spinning, and he could barely move. His ears had bad barotrauma, so he popped them. He was lying on his back, on something, that felt like a dentist's chair. He tried to look around, but couldn't see much, it was all very dark. He could only make out the faint outline of walls, a door, a counter, and -

His eyes came upon something unsettling, unsettling enough that Martin thought he might be in a dream. There, standing in the corner, was a person, engulfed in shadows. Martin didn't know what to say or do, so paralyzed was he, by fear, by actual paralysis, that he just lay there, staring at the figure. A few shadowy minutes passed, then Martin coughed, and the figure jumped in place, as if it had been surprised.

"You've woken." It said. Its voice was of a nature Martin had never heard before; it was muffled, gargling, but echoey all at the same time. "Hello, _Martin Kratt_."

"Who... are you?" Martin asked.

"You wouldn't know me." It said. "But I know you." The shadow began to move out of its corner. As it approached, Martin could make out that it was small, wiry, and rather unbalanced. It slinked and stumbled, circling around Martin. It looked like something Martin could easily overtake, that is, if Martin could ever move, except for one thing. There was something just _wrong_ about the way its head was shaped, but it was all too dark for him to make out what it was.

"Do you know how long I've been down here?" It asked.

"Nope." Martin said, trying to produce some levity in this frightful situation.

"This existence is a punishment for me," it continued, "for something that happened five years ago. I've been trapped, Kratt, in this _pit_, because of her."

"Her who?"

"Her..." he stopped circling, ending up just beyond the right side of Martin's feet. "Her, my goddess, my _devil_. The perfect combination of madness and intellect, of barbarism and civility, of blessing and cruelty! Her, who has unlocked the powers of life itself, at the expense of her own humanity! Her, the gift to the world who only wants to destroy!"

"Very well put." Said Martin, having a bit of nervous amusement, as he thought, _oh boy, this guy is completely nuts!_

"Thoughts of her haunt my every waking moment, words on her I know by heart." Martin saw through the dark that it put its hand on its forehead. "She did _this_ to me... because of _you_. Because of what _you've_ cost me!"

"I don't know you!" Martin insisted.

"You passed right behind me." He said. "You were _right there behind me_, weren't you? Slinking around like the insect you are."

"Look, whatever you think I did-"

"Don't lecture me!" He tried to shout, though his strange muffled voice did not allow for volumes higher than a regular speaking tone.

"I'm sure this is a mistake! I don't... I don't do _stuff_ to people, okay? I'm not that kind of guy! So, whatever it is you think I did, I'm sorry!" Martin figured this plea probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a try anyways.

"'Not that kind of guy?' Then what are you doing, running around, foiling the plots of businessmen, entrepreneurs, _visionaries_, like me?"

"Oh." Said Martin. "Oh yeah, I do that. Only, I don't really call them those things. I call them _poachers_." Martin furrowed his brow. "Is that what you are?"

"Ha! By your crude simplification of things, yes, that's what I _was_."

"Well, then, I'm not sorry." He said. "So what was your scheme? Fur industry? Logging? Hunting for fun? I've tangoed with the lot of them, so you're probably right. I _won't_ remember you. You're just one in a million jerks who come and go."

"Leopards." He said. "My scheme was _leopards_."

"Oh. _Oh_." Martin got a sudden uncomfortable chill as he realized that this had to do with his very first expedition into the field, when he was all alone and pretty inexperienced, so the whole deal blew up in his face. He began running through his head for all the people who were involved, who this could be - the secretive man he had worked with, who had vanished afterwards with his daughter? The loud, vile villain who was supposedly dead?

"My name is Tyler Wilfred." He continued. "I was the lead scientist on that Leopard-gathering assignment lead by... the _insufferable_ Vincent Bruce."

"Y-you were the scientist guy? I... kinda remember you?"

"It was a fine operation, going smoothly, until _you showed up_ and ruined everything! And I was made to _suffer_ for it."

"I'm... sorry, but, you shouldn't have been an evil scientist?" Martin tried to shrug, but really only twitched at the shoulders. "I don't know what to say, really. This is kinda... anti climactic."

"C-climactic? _Climactic_?" He lunged forwards, grabbing Martin by the ankles and leaping up onto the chair he was in to hover over him. "Climactic? Like my suffering is some movie? Like this is entertainment for you?"

Martin let out a strangled gasp. The figure who had been stalking around him came more clearly into view, and went from a strange circling lunatic to the most horrific and disturbing sight he'd ever seen, topping this recent increasingly awful succession in traumatic experiences. From neck down this was an average man, of less-average build, just as Martin had predicted. But also as Martin had predicted, there was indeed something horribly, horribly wrong with his head.

Because it wasn't a human head at all.

There was a long straight muzzle with a drooling, foaming mouth at the end, and a flat, running nose. Two pointed ears sprouted from the side, with jagged cut marks on the edges. His eyes were on either side of his snout, with horizontally slanted pupils, and old mucus crusting the edges and running down like old tears. His skin was mostly hairless, red and blistered, covered in old scratch marks clearly done by his own hands. Most prominently of all, sprouting from his forehead, were two, sickle-like horns.

This man had the head of a _goat_.

Martin retched a few times at the appalling sight.

"You see what she's done to me? You see what she _can_ do? She's the greatest mind among us, not lacking in the vilest of imaginations! My own face is my prison; what she has devised for me, I could never match with what I may do to you." He leaned in, his horrid, quite odorous visage coming mere inches away from Martin's trembling own. "What? Have you no clever comeback this time, whelp? Five years have I been locked here with this torture, and I have the rest of my lifetime to go. But at least now, I have you here to _serve the sentence with me._ You caused my punishment. Now,_ I_ shall be _your's_."

.

.

.

_Why here? Why do I keep coming back here?_

Chris was in the bunk bed again. He always, always kept returning to that bunk bed, always with those changes that threw him off, that made him upset. The first time it was all wrapped in calamity and confusion, the second was hellish and dark, and this time, this time around was the worst of all.

All this change involved was a shift in perspective, but that shift alone stirred in him emotions he could not quite pin down - intense, instinctual, deeply-seeded nostalgia, coated in layers of infancy, comfort, absence, loneliness and dread. It was just that little change in angle. The window was above him instead of below. The floor was within touching distance, instead of the ceiling. That's all that did it, just the fact that he was not on the top bunk, but the bottom, just the fact that he was not in his bed, but Martin's.

There were quite a few times when Chris would be on Martin's half of the bunk. Obviously, he was there himself before he could climb the ladder to the top, but after that, he would continue to make frequent visits. Martin and Chris would sometimes turn the bottom bunk into a little plush fortress, by tucking blankets in between the frame and mattress of the bunk above so that they'd hang down like curtains, and then by throwing every stuffed animal and pillows they could fit inside, and there they'd eat popcorn and watch movies. Other times that was just the place where they'd hang out and talk, Martin would even help Chris there with his homework from time to time, if the kitchen table was "too boring to wanna do anything," as Martin put it. Other times, especially but not exclusively when he was quite young, Chris, during one of those particularly harsh thunderstorms, or after a terrible nightmare, would climb down the ladder and seek refuge next to his brother. At first he, as a child does, would stand there several minutes, clutching whatever was his plush animal of the night, unsure as to whether or not waking Martin would anger him - then of course there would go the loud, grinding clap of thunder or the shadow on the wall that looked like the monster he'd dreamt of, and he would, weeping, shake Martin awake, who always welcomed Chris in with open arms. Eventually Chris came to know his brother would never turn him down, and so if he was frightened in the night, he wouldn't hesitate to climb in there. As he got older that would more happen due to some fit of anxiety, especially as the time for Martin's college-bound departure approached.

But then, it arrived. The bottom was left empty. Chris never slept in it, but sometimes, after a particularly miserable day at school, he'd come in, sit on Martin's bed, and just stare at the floor, sometimes for an hour or two.

Martin wasn't here this time too, but clearly this was different. Chris wasn't sitting, or staring, he was lying down, slowly waking up, which just shouldn't be happening without Martin there. Worst of all, there wasn't even a space where Martin should be. Chris was not a child anymore who could fit next to someone in a space like this, he was fully-grown, and taking up the entire bed. It almost looked like Martin never existed in the first place.

That unspoken feeling, combined with all those happy memories and scary memories and memories too early to prescribe emotions to was why this was the worst so far. In the face of it all, Chris just felt nauseous.

_This dream is really getting to me._ Chris thought. Then he realized something. _Wait, I don't get lucid dreams._

The morning light was filtering softly through the window, catching and crowning the dust in her rays. He could smell that old maple wood smell from the frame. The decorations, which ones were out, which ones were absent, complied perfectly with what had and hadn't been packed away in the brother's various movings about. The sheets rubbed softly against his skin, as they always had.

This was not a dream. Chris was actually here, in New Jersey, in he and his brother's room, in his brother's bed.

So where was his brother?

Chris sat up. There was a slight pain in his chest, no worse than a needle prick. He put his hand there. _I was in Antarctica. I was in the Tortuga. This hurt, really badly, it was broken! So what - _

Was that the dream? It couldn't be, right? Sure, the memories coming through of what was seen and said then were hazy, but the pain felt so real, as did the fear. But Chris was beginning to second guess himself.

Chris leapt out of Martin's bed and made his way down the hallway, not really bothering to look into another change of clothes, as if this were a typical Saturday morning from his childhood days. He turned down and around the house towards where he could hear noises - shuffling, cabinets, a spoon stirring in a porcelain cup - the kitchen.

And there was his mother.

She was a wonderful woman, straightforward, sturdy, but nonetheless so caring, always armed with steadfast kindness and gentle sternness. Her powers to explain things were mystifying; she always knew what to say to put things in perspective, either when it came to freeing a child from a spell of distress or teaching that child something important. She was honest, but never in a frightening way, like she always carried a shining light with her that showed the paths hidden away.

But today, that light seemed to be flickering. Her eyes looked tired, and worn, her hair was more ratty that usual, and she hadn't put on any makeup, which normally wouldn't have bothered Chris, but now it seemed like she had been robbed of a bit of her control. Her face was red, a bit puffy, and there were some wrinkles he hadn't noticed before.

She saw Chris and smiled that sort of soft, motherly smile, though this time it quivered a bit.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." She said, drifting towards him, arms extended for a hug. Chris was by now taller than his mother, but he still always felt so small and weak in her arms, because she was just so strong next to him.

"Your father's out on an errand," she said, pulling slightly away from him, but still maintaining her grasp, running her fingers through his hair. "He didn't think you would wake up today, he swore you would be out at least two more days. That's how you always were with anesthesia."

_Anesthesia. Was I in surgery? Was it for my broken - oh._

"Where's Martin?" Chris asked.

His mother stepped back more. The hand that was on his head dropped to his shoulder; she sighed shakily, and looked down briefly with glassy eyes, before returning her gaze to her son, and saying, "Let's sit down, okay?" She gestured towards the breakfast table.

Chris nodded as he felt a knot grow in his stomach. He moved to one of the chairs, but she power-walked over to the stovetop. "I just made myself some tea, it's french vanilla, from that tea shop Kathy recommended me - you remember Kathy, right? Oh, uh, would you like a cup?" She continued.

Chris shook his head, saying "no" very quietly, which she of course heard, because she heard everything.

"Are you sure?" She asked, turning to look at Chris, carrying a white teacup in her hands.

"Yeah." He said, folding his hands together on the table. She nodded, and moved to join him, her cardigan flowing behind her like the trails of a wandering spirit. She sat next to him without saying a word, staring into her tea, not taking a sip of it.

"So where is he?" Chris asked again. She reached over and put her hand on his nearest arm.

"We... still don't know." She said.

"Oh." Said Chris. They sat in silence, listening to about seven ticks from the nearby wall clock.

"They said... he went to this abandoned outpost to get help after you crashed. He radioed in but the call was..." she sniffled, clearly holding back a newly approaching wave of tears. "And when the people got there, he was gone, and they're still looking but... they have no idea where he is." Her voice was wavering greatly. She took a moment to bend her head and let out a sob, gripping Chris' arm tightly. With gritted teeth, she gathered herself and raised her head again.

"How long has it been?" Chris asked, he himself trying not to break down and weep, both at the news and the sight of his mother in pieces.

"Let's see..." His mother said, reaching for a tissue box on the table, blowing her nose then wiping her eyes, then tossing it to the trashcan, which was right next to them instead of in the alcove where it normally was. Chris noticed that it was filled almost completely with those tissues. She recited the course of events almost as if they were a mnemonic device she was using to calm herself, "you got some urgent care for a first day in the Russian outpost, but were then helicoptered to a hospital in Chile. You were there for about five days, I think, and then when you weren't in critical condition anymore you and the crew flew back to the states - you were dropped off at the hospital just on the other side of the 287, just to make sure everything was alright, and then, well, you were brought here." She smiled again, clearly grateful that Chris had made it home safely. "It's been about a week and a day."

Chris felt a pit grow in him. It had been that long? Martin had been gone for _that long?_ It seemed unreal, like only a few minutes ago he was sitting on the floor of the Tortuga, telling himself all he had to do to be helpful was get up and soldier through the pain, and instead all that got him was a week and a day of being no help to anybody, lying, sleeping, practically in a vegetative state.

So Chris had to make up for it. He _had to._

"Where's Aviva and the others?" He asked, his brain switching into _don't sit, just keep moving_ mode.

"They're in New Mexico, in that warehouse of hers in Las Cruces, fixing the... the ship."

"I've got to go to them." Chris said, standing up.

"Are you sure?" She asked, rising too. "You just woke up, don't you think -"

"No." He said. "I've _got_ to get there." Then Chris stopped. His mother obviously had been going through hell. It couldn't be fair of him to just leave her like this, so frightened and miserable; but at the same time, Chris would go mad if he stayed in this house, not knowing what happened to Martin, not knowing what to do about it. But Chris wasn't about to say that to his grieving mother. "No, I'm sorry. I can stay."

She shook her head. "Chris, I get it. You need to go to them."

"No, really, I can stay!"

"Chris, don't try to fool your mother. I know you need this, I can't keep you here. Besides, one thing that's keeping me going in this world," she placed a hand on Chris' cheek, "is knowing my wonderful sons are out there, making it a better place." She put down her hand and chuckled. "And if you're worried about me being all by myself, don't. Obviously your father is with me, and your sisters finally got a leave of absence, and are driving up here." She winked. "_They_ might not be so understanding, so you might wanna hurry up and head out."

Chris hugged her again, and ran off to his room to pack. He didn't know how long he'd be gone, or where eventually he'd end up, but it didn't matter. He planned for everything, and grabbed for everything, even having to sit back and and cross out contingency plans just to fit everything in his suitcase. It took a lot of thorough searching to feel confident he was prepared for anything, anything at all, anything that the world would throw at him.

Because one way or another, he was going to find Martin.


	6. 6

Chris grabbed the first flight he possibly could, so it wasn't very nice or direct, slated to make one stop in Nashville and then another in Dallas before reaching the final destination. He of course ended up with enough time at the house beforehand to say hello and goodbye to his father, before setting off to the airport.

In his recent travels Chris had gotten used to taking the Tortuga, thus not needing to go through any security or checkpoints outside of getting approval from the girls for the locations he wanted to travel to. However, his family took planes around quite a bit when he was younger, so he was quite able to readjust and navigate - though, one negative side effect of not using this form of transportation for a while was that the crowds were making him feel claustrophobic. He just felt surrounded by judgey strangers, who all looked frustrated and unwelcoming and annoyed, swirling around him in clouds of bad moods.

The airport had clearly improved since he'd been there last with a lot of nicer, newer installations. However, from the perspective of an adult and a biologist, he was none too pleased with the food options that had remained trashy as ever, and supported the mindless and cruel animal-killing machine that was the fast and cheap food industry; as a child he would have been thrilled to get nuggets from that burger place in the food court, but now he was hesitant just to get a breakfast sandwich from the coffee shop that put leaves in their logo in some attempt to trick the everyday passerby into thinking their brand was wholesome and organic. It wasn't.

Nonetheless Chris was hungry, and sat down with that breakfast sandwich, and a plain coffee that he had also gotten, and scarfed them both down as he waited to board the plane.

While on the plane, he knew he was not going to be able to tolerate the crying babies, pilot announcements, and beeping seatbelt signals, so he plugged in his earbuds and put on some music. There was a playlist Martin had made for Chris a while back when he left for college called "Greatest Hits for my Greatest Bro." Chris listened to it a lot when they were apart, but when the two were reunited he didn't really touch it all that much. The brothers just didn't organize their playlists the same, with Martin grouping songs together more based on their energy and themes, and Chris more on their genre, so without a need of something to remember Martin by, Chris let the playlist alone and continued listening to music in his own way. Quite frankly, Martin was surprised in his frequent snooping on Chris' Creature Pod that Chris still had the playlist at all. It must have been for this moment: now, he felt he needed it more than ever.

In retrospect it was probably a mistake to put that playlist on, what with all the stress and uncertainty surrounding Martin's whereabouts, and with the fact that all the songs were hand-picked by Martin specifically for Chris whenever he was feeling stressed or uncertain. A few of the songs made him tear up, including the very first one, which caused the lady sitting next to him prod him on the arm and ask, "you're not afraid of flying, are you?"

Chris just shook his head and said he was having a rough week. She nodded, then took a second take at Chris.

"Wait, are you one of those...Kart brothers, or something? My nephew is part of your...fan club, or whatever."

Chris didn't want to deal with this right now. "No, but I get that a lot."

"Oh yeah, me too, I _hate_ it getting confused for a celebrity. People tell me all the time that I look like Emma Watson, and they ask for autographs." She did not look like Emma Watson. "But really, my nephew is _super_ into those brothers and their animal stuff. They're like, superheroes for animals, right? A little weird, if you ask me, but he just talks on and on about them, although I think he likes the other one more? Sorry, the other one that you don't look like, who's tall and funny? And kinda hot, if you ask me."

"That's nice." Chris said, through gritted teeth. He put his earbuds back in and continued to stare, misty-eyed, out the window. She huffed, saying "alrighty then" to herself, and returned to an e-book on her mini tablet. Not a care in the world had she, even sitting next to a person whose world was falling apart.

Chris always envied Martin's ability to sleep on planes. They were too unpredictable and turbulent as environments for Chris to get any shut-eye, and it was the same even in the more stable and steady Tortuga. So Chris was wide-awake the whole way through, staring blankly at the wall or seat in front of him, as sentimental music, memories of Martin and potential scenarios for what was coming next all passed through his head.

At the second stop in Dallas the woman sitting next to him, and the man sitting next to her, were amongst the people to get off. Replacing them was another couple, middle-aged, who payed him no mind.

Finally they touched down in Las Cruces. Chris had of course called the crew ahead of time to tell them he was on his way, and of course they tried to talk him out of it, telling him he needed to rest and process what had happened, but he wouldn't have any of if. After all, if they were being proactive, why couldn't he? So the crew admitted there was nothing they could do to stop him, and agreed to send Jimmy to pick him up.

Chris felt weird going through _this_ airport. It was the last one he had ever been in, when he flew over to see the completed Tortuga, whose existence made all airports obsolete; but at the same time, that was so long ago, almost a year now, so this combination of freshness and staleness left a strange taste in his mind. Instead of feeling like he was moving forward towards something, he just felt like he was trapped in the past, and this left him a touch disoriented, because while he had run through his head all the _things_ that _could_ happen, he had not predicted any of the emotions that came with them.

Chris grabbed his old green suitcase from the conveyor belt and moved to the outdoor pickup area, pulling up his Pod to call Jimmy and tell him where he was - but upon coming out Jimmy was already there waiting for him.

"Hey man." Jimmy said. The two hugged. "I'm glad you came out so quick, those traffic officers were giving me the stink eye for waiting here for so long."

"How long were you out here?" Chris asked.

"Like, three minutes! These guys _really_ want to keep things moving." Jimmy opened the trunk and put in Chris' suitcase, despite Chris' protests of "I can get it!" It was too little too late, and not a big deal overall. The two hopped in the car.

"I had to get a rental," Jimmy said, "till the Createrra's repaired. Her engine got completely trashed, and she's got special parts, so it's been taking a while to find replacements."

"Mm-hm. It's a nice rental." Chris said.

"Yup."

The two drove in silence for a bit, before Jimmy spoke up again.

"Hey, I'm sorry that we kinda... ditched you in New Jersey."

"What? No, it's fine. I want to find Martin as soon as possible, I totally get that she wanted to do that too."

"I mean... that's kinda it?" Jimmy sighed. "She just wanted to get back on the Tortuga."

"Oh?"

"Maybe it's one of those people-grieve-in-their-own-ways kinda things? She's just burying herself in her work. I guess Koki's being like that too. Don't tell either I said that, they'd kick my ass."

Chris chuckled. "So you got the Tortuga back to Las Cruces?"

"Yeah." Jimmy said. "Honestly, it was easier to get it out of Antarctica than it was getting it up into New Mexico, since we crash-landed on the shore. It's... in rough condition."

Chris sighed. "Have you heard any...news about Martin?"

Jimmy shook his head sadly. "No, we haven't." He breathed quite deeply, and sniffed a bit.

Not a lot of people, especially ones who were initially put with strangers, could have stuck together in a small crew like that for so long, let alone still care about eachother. Fights break out, personalities clash, and they all just grow apart. But the Wild Kratts crew was lucky, that they were so close despite their differences and constant exposure to one another. While Chris didn't like throwing around the term "family" liberally, just because the idea meant so much to him, the crew really had become like that. While Martin and Chris were obviously the closest, Chris couldn't in his right mind think that no one else would be mourning. "You know," Jimmy continued, "we may be in luck today, some big governmental guy is supposed to drop in for a visit."

"Oh?" Chris perked up. "To give information? Like someone from the FBI?"

Jimmy shrugged. "He's just some... government guy. We don't really know who he is or why he's coming, only that it's urgent, and he's important."

"Huh." Chris said. "Weird."

After about an hour and a half of driving and chummy conversation, two arrived at the warehouse - well, it really used to be a small private airport, but Aviva had bought it from the original owner, liking it for its size, seclusion, and reasonable price tag. She had to raise the roof a _lot_ when they got it so that they could actually fit the ship inside, and you could see where the old walls stopped and the new walls began. It was out in the middle of the desert, surrounded by mirages, heat waves and tumble weeds. While they were out on adventures, the place would sit abandoned, but the Tortuga was brought to it for maintenance every so often, if they needed something particularly important done. Usually while the girls would work inside, the bros would run around, exploring the surrounding desert, but not this time. This time, Chris was here to help.

There was a barrier gate guarding the road leading up to it, though you could easily drive around it if you went off-road, because the original owner, for some reason, took the fence with him after he had sold it. Nonetheless, because the crew wanted to effect the desert as little as possible with their presence, Jimmy took the time to fumble around in his pockets, pull out a little fob, roll down the window, and touch the fob to a sensor. With a beep and a flashing green light, the gate was open, and they were in. If he didn't have the fob there was also a call button on the sensor, so guests could contact the main building and get remote entry, but that's neither here nor there.

Upon arrival, Chris noticed a massive pile of rubbish from the Tortuga sitting outside the building - there were heavy duty garbage bags, probably filled with broken glass, various metal parts and busted utilities, and, to Chris' dismay, many of the old plant pots, broken into terracotta bits. They pulled past it, and parked next to one of two pedestrian entrances to the structure.

There was a lounge the boys passed through before they got to the main hangar. It was in a small side building, which was where there was ac, and restrooms, and some other rooms where the crew would lay out sleeping bags if it was to be multiple days of maintenance. Off in the corner of this lounge, there was an old desk with monitors, where things like the gate and security cameras were managed. Chris set all his belongings down next to a loveseat.

The inside of the main hangar wasn't really noteworthy. It had high ceilings and a concrete floor. There were large fans whirring at their maximum capacities, and everything was quite dusty.

There was the Tortuga itself. All its windows were completely removed, including the sunroof. Aside from that, and the fact that it was missing a leg, whose place was at the moment being filled by what looked like an enormous car jack, the ship looked to be in pretty good shape. The head was lowered and opened, as was too the door in the belly. What did look to be in bad condition where the vehicles the Tortuga once carried, which were all lined up limp and battered along the wall like victims of a firing squad. Chris couldn't see the girls anywhere, but he could hear their voices.

"They're probably inside." Jimmy said. "Hey! Girls, we're back!" He shouted. No response. The two looked at eachother, and headed into the Tortuga.

The ship was completely empty of all their stuff, and the power was still all gone too. It was just an echoey shell, an animal that had been gutted. They made their way to the upper levels, which continued to exemplify this.

The girls were knelt down next to the center console, working on some wires in an open panel. They heard the boys come in, and turned around.

"I brought back the war hero!" Jimmy proclaimed.

"Okay, I wouldn't go _that far_," Chris said, getting a hug from Koki, then Aviva. "I didn't buckle up my seat, if anything I'm just a bad passenger."

"Hey, Chris, are you alright?" Aviva said, releasing her hug. She looked tired and strained, her bagged eyes possessing just a little less sparkle than normal.

"Yeah, I'll be ok. So what's the plan?" Chris asked.

"Well, right now we're just hoping to restore power to the Tortuga." Koki said. "The crystals are fine, but a lot of what was routing the power to the rest of the ship got trashed."

"No, I mean... for finding Martin."

"Oh." Aviva said. "We don't really... have one."

Chris raised an eyebrow.

"We just... have to fix the ship." She continued, her eyes darting away.

"Okay, well, no, that's not entirely true." Koki said. "We can't really help Martin until we've got the ship back online, because, well, we can't track his Creature Pod without the central systems of the Tortuga, and, well, even if we can't get a signal, or he doesn't have it anymore, wherever he may be, we could need Creature Powers, maybe something we don't have yet, and we can't make new power suits without, well, _power_."

"Yes." Aviva said quickly. "So for now, getting the Tortuga back is our biggest priority."

"Maybe." Chris said. "While you do that though, I should go down to Antarctica and look for clues." He turned and headed out of the Tortuga, this time through the cockpit.

"What? No, Chris!" She said, following after him. "Don't get all amateur sleuth on us, not like this! We are not splitting up the team again, especially over something so... nothing!"

"Nothing?" Chris asked angrily.

"Chris, there are people looking there now who have found _nothing_, and they're trained professionals-"

There was a knock on the other pedestrian door, the one that lead directly into the hangar.

"Speak of the devil." Koki said.

"Who's that?" Jimmy asked. "The government guy? Did he drive around the gate?"

Aviva rushed to let whoever it was in.

A man was there. He was tall and broad, and looked like someone who belonged in a wild west movie more than a government agency, weirdly suiting the desert he had just emerged from. He was slightly on the older side of middle aged, and wore a pair of near frameless glasses; his face was long and handsome, though burdened with heavy, defined, drooping cheeks, which were bridged together by a silver mustache, and covered in short but rough stubble. He wore a suit, with a tightly buttoned collared shirt beneath it that his neck bulged out over ever so slightly, and a bright red tie, which he often adjusted with his hands. Those hands looked considerably more aged than the rest of him, marked like ridged badlands with cracks and wrinkles. He was missing a thumb on his left.

He entered with the kind of confidence that was room-silencing. It also helped that following him was a woman who was ten times more intimidating than he. She had short hair, and wore a large, dark peacoat, in whose pockets she kept her hands. You could tell from the shape that stowed in there, what she grasped, was a pair of handguns, one in each pocket. Her eyes were covered by aviator sunglasses.

"Hello, you're the official?" Aviva asked.

The man spoke, his voice having that old-man ruggedness to it, but with a hint of songlike pretentiousness. "Ah, Miss Corcovado." He stumbled with the pronunciation of her name. "I'm glad I was able to find you and your little...operation out here. It's good to see you again."

"I'm sorry? You look familiar, but I'm afraid I'm not sure where I know you from." She said, trying her best to be professional towards this very professional looking fellow, despite being miffed that they had barged in like that, without ringing them at the gate.

"Oh, my apologies." He pulled out a badge, it wasn't anything Chris recognized. "My name is Paul Hubbard, we met briefly in India, about five years ago?"

"Ind- _oh_." Her brows dropped, and her eyes narrowed.

"I always figured our paths would cross again, though it is a shame it's under such... _circumstances_."

"I told you." She snapped. "I'm not interested in joining your _militia_. If that's what you're here ab-."

"Oh, no, no, no, of course not! You made that very clear, as unfortunate as it is, since you all are _much too qualified_ to concern yourselves with mere... environmentalism." He rolled his shoulders back as if adjusting his jacket. "You could do some real work here with us-"

"Why are you here?" Aviva cut him off.

"Oh, two people!" He said, making some small gesture at the woman behind him, who seemed to be growing tense. "Nora and Axel. Those are the names your colleague mentioned in his last call, correct? Well, on their own they're only tasteless, tacky names, but together..." he shook his head. "Axel Neely, and Nora Donovan. They're a pair of dangerous smugglers, who are involved in our primary, ongoing investigation. You know, the one that, five years ago, concerned Mr. Bruce."

"Okay." Aviva crossed her arms. "So what do you want? Information?"

"Oh, no, I'm sure you have nothing for me. You poor souls were trapped, right? It was all an unfortunate incident, so I'm here just to assure you that this case is _completely_ out of your hands. You won't have to worry about it anymore, and you are highly advised not to."

"_What?" _Koki shot up. "You're telling us to just sit and do nothing while Martin needs our help?"

He raised his eyebrows, adding many creases to his forehead. He chuckled brazenly. "Needs your help? My good girl, the only 'help' you owe poor Martin is making sure he gets a decent funeral."

"What?" Koki shouted again.

"It's a shame, he was such a..._lively_ fellow. But those two smugglers, as sadistic as they have been known to be, are also never lacking in efficiency when it comes to covering their tracks. I have no doubt they practiced such lethal means of self-preservation in this case."

"What are you saying?" Jimmy asked.

"Pardon, I assumed you were all as well educated as Miss Corcovado. I'm saying that Martin is in all likelihood _very much dead_."

"I'm sorry, who the hell is this guy, really?" Chris finally spoke up. Fists balled, he began approaching the man, but as Aviva saw the woman behind him lock up like an animal about to charge, she drew out her hand and stopped Chris in his tracks.

"Chris," she said, "this is one of the guys in the task force that 'helped' Martin in India. You know, with that Vincent Bruce guy? And the leopards?*"

"Miss Corcovado, I certainly hope you haven't been sharing that story with _everyone you know?_We are meant to be discreet, here."

"Oh, no, this is Martin's younger brother, Chris." She said.

"Yes, I'm _well aware_." He said back. "And I'll have you both know, I am not 'one of the guys,' I am the _leader_ of this task force." He said this as if he were trying to intimidate them.

"I don't care what you are." Chris snarled. "Until you find his goddamn body, you have no right to tell us Martin's dead."

Hubbard stared, completely devoid of emotion, at Chris, then at Aviva. "I'm surprised, Miss Corcovado, that you keep such company."

"If you're turning that into another speech about how I should join you, save it. Better yet, take it up with _that_." She pointed to the door.

"Miss Corcovado, I was simply trying to offer condolences and assurance." He said.

"You've got a funny way of doing it." Retorted Koki. He shot her one of those I-wasn't-talking-to-you sorts of glances.

"Very well. If you can't all be couth, that's not my problem. Just know, if you look into this any further, there will be consequences. It's fine you don't want to make allies of us. Be careful not to make us _enemies_." He waved his hand, and his companion opened the door for him. He turned his back to them and left, with her following behind him. The door shut violently and loudly.

"Pig." Koki murmured.

"We're totally ignoring this guy, right?" Jimmy asked. "Just making sure."

"_Oh yes we are_." Aviva said.

"Great." Chris said. "I'm off to Antarctica then."

"_Oh no you're not_." Aviva said.

"What? Aviva, sitting around playing the long game is probably just what that guy wants us to do! As long as he's in charge of the investigation, they're gonna get nothing done towards finding Martin, and by the time we get the Tortuga back online, they'll've covered everything up, and we'll really have no chance to find him!"

"Chris, we're actually not that far away from getting power back." Then she grimaced. "Fixing all the circuitry and hardware may take a lot longer, though."

"So I'm _going_."

"I can go with him." Koki offered.

"No, no, nobody's going." Aviva said. "Look, I get why you're not getting this, because you've never seen these guys in action, but _trust me_, they are efficient and no-nonesense. If they catch you snooping around for clues, you will be at best detained and at the likeliest _shot on sight_. I can't let that happen!"

"But we can't just wait until everything works!" Chris said. "Who knows what could happen to Martin in the meantime?"

"Chris I am not splitting up this team again, and that's final!" She snapped. "That's what Martin did last time, and look what _that_ got him!"

Chris was frozen. He looked as if he were once again in actual, terrible pain.

"Chris - oh, I-" Aviva stammered, realizing what she'd said, "I didn't mean it, Chris, I'm sorry."

"No, no it's... whatever." Chris whispered. "I need to go think."

.

.

.

Chris paced one of those side rooms. Aviva was right, they were all trapped, once again. Those guys, whoever they were, were just too dangerous to go up against, especially split up. Chris realized that in his hastiness to save his brother he had become exactly the kind of person who started this all - his brother.

_Is that what this is about? Is this why I'm so..._

Chris sat down, his head in his hands. He was so confused, he had planned for what could be done, but he hadn't figured out why. Obviously he wanted to save his brother, but there was something else clouding his mind. Everyone else was right, he probably should have taken the time to process his emotions, because now he was just _lost_.

There was only one thing he could think to do to remedy things. He called his mother.

The tears began welling up as the phone rang. He was nearly in full cry by the time she picked up, and her voice came through.

"Chris? Chris, sweetie, what is it?"

It took him a bit of weeping before he gathered up the words.

"Mom, are you... mad at Martin?"

"Mad? At Martin?"

"I think everyone else is, for...running off and getting...taken. Like, everyone told him he should stay and wait, but he didn't, so like... you aren't mad, are you?"

"Good heavens no!" She said. "Are you?"

"I'm not sure, I... like... but... why aren't you mad?"

"Well, because, he did exactly what I would've done!"

"Really?" He sobbed.

"Of course, Chris! I don't know how to be a bird with those power suits you use, obviously, but if my son was in danger I would have jumped to save you in a _heartbeat_."

Chris continued to cry.

"Martin's always been protective of his little siblings, you know that." She said. "Okay, think of it this way: you remember Tommy Perkins' older brother Dale?"

"No."

"Well, when you were in the 3rd grade Dale almost hit you with his bike, because you were standing in the sidewalk staring at the birds; after he missed he could've just kept on riding, but he stopped and yelled at you, and pushed to the ground. You came home crying, and the next day Martin got detention for a month -"

"Wait, I kinda remember this." Chris said, after a giant sniff. "Martin punched him, right?"

"In the face! Your father and I were so mad with him, you know why? Because there were other things we could've done instead. We were going to talk to the school, to Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, but, well, I can't remember if we just didn't tell Martin what we were going to do or not, but he jumped the track, without thinking about other options, because he was mad too. In Antarctica, did you have other options?"

"Well... kinda? But, if we'd gone with them, then I would've...you know..." Chris trailed off.

"See? Martin did the only thing that got you to safety! So, I'm not mad at him."

"I...guess I'm not either." Chris said. "Then why do I still feel so angry?"

"Because someone took your brother, Chris." She said. "I'm angry too, at whoever did this!" He could hear her begin to tear up as well over the phone. "Those are terrible, terrible people, who have done something terrible to my babies, to both of them. I can't _not_ be mad."

Chris was quiet for a bit. He decided to tell her about Paul Hubbard, and what he had said. She only hummed deeply after hearing it. "I don't believe him. I keep telling myself," he continued, "that I know he's still alive. That it's some brother thing, you know? That supposed sibling connection people talk about, where you can feel their pain or something? But now I don't know..." his crying picked back up quite heavily, "_is that what this is, or am I just in denial?"_

"Oh, Chris," she said, and then, "oh, honey." She gave him some time to let it out. He sat down on one of the lounge seats, and began shaking, practically rocking himself back and forth with all the distressed energy he'd been slowly building up. Eventually he ran out of that energy and calmed down.

"Chris, I don't know a lot about this." She said. "I don't know anything about the Tortuga, or the villains you face, or this Hubbard guy and what his deal is. But I know your brother, Chris. Maybe not the odds of him being... alive... but I know _him_. He would not give up on himself, and he would not give up on you. He is a fighter, and a shining light - if anyone could make it out of this okay, it's Martin. You have to have faith in that."

Chris sighed. "Yeah, I guess. Thanks."

"You two have just astonished me, you always have," She continued, "with how much you're changing the world for the better. Whatever happens, I'm proud of you both, and I'm just gonna say, I don't think there are a lot of powers on this earth, no matter how _terrible_ they may be, who are even capable of splitting up your friendship. You two are too sure of a team."

"A...team."

Suddenly, something switched on in his brain. A little connection between those two dots that he didn't even know mattered, but were needed to blow this whole thing wide open. He had done it. He had found the solution. "Mom, I have to go, I've figured something out."

"Okay." She said.

"I'm bringing Martin home, I promise."

"Please be safe, Chris."

Chris hung up, and ran to the hangar.

He had burst in on a conversation the crew was having. He just caught Aviva saying "just needs space" before they all turned and noticed him.

"Chris! Are you okay?" She asked.

"What? Yeah, yeah."

"Chris, if you need to take some time t-"

"No, forget that." He said. "I know how we're gonna find Martin."

"Oh?" Aviva asked. "We're all ears."

He looked at them. They all smiled confidently and compassionately, and he felt a wave of assurance accompany his newfound revelation.

"So, we know for a fact Zach Varmitech was in Antarctica, right?" He said.

"Yeah," Jimmy said, "that's why we were headed there."

"But these other guys, Nora and Axel, they were there too." He looked at them expectantly, but they knew not what to say.

"What are you getting at Chris?" Koki asked.

"Really think about it. What are the odds that two separate villain... groups, I guess, are in the same place at the same time, let alone Antarctica?"

"Pretty common, I'd say." Aviva said, raising her eyebrow, and putting her hands on her hips. "Chris, we deal with multiple villains at once all the time."

"Yes, but only if they're..." he gestured for them to complete his thought.

"...teamed up." Aviva finished. "Oh my god, you don't think that-"

"Zach Varmitech is teamed up with Nora and Axel." Chris said.

"I'll be damned." Aviva replied, throwing her hands in the air.

"Welcome back, Chris." Koki grinned.

"So what do we do about it?" Jimmy asked.

"You guys can keep working on the Tortuga." Chris said. "I can go after Zach."

"Chris, I told you -"

"This is Zach we're talking about, Aviva! What could happen?" He said.

"Yeah, but if they're a packaged deal now, Nora and Axel may be with him too. I'm not making the same mistake of letting anyone go by themselves." She shook her head. "No, that's not how we do this. I'll go with you."

"What?" Chris and Koki and Jimmy all said at once.

"Aviva, what about working on the Tortuga? You said it yourself, if we don't have that to help Martin, it doesn't matter where he is!" Chris said.

"Aviva, I think Chris has got this under control." Koki said. "He's right, we need to get the Tortuga back."

"No, we don't." She said. Everyone stared at her in stunned confusion. "No, no, we don't! God, I can't believe I said that we did! We've put too much stock into it, okay? I'm not making the same mistake of letting someone go by themselves, but I'm also not making the same mistake of waiting, because that's what cost us Martin, just as much as anything else! We have to act, we have to go save him, because I'm not... I'm not losing anyone else." She began to tear up. "I'm not...guys, I'm not doing that again!" She wiped her eyes. "Forget the Tortuga. There's no point to it without Martin. I can just fix the MIK if we need suits."

"In that case," Jimmy said, "we're all going."

"Yeah!" Koki said. "As a team."

"As a team." Aviva repeated. Chris looked at her, beaming gratefully. The whole group hugged.

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Chris asked. "We find Zach, we find Martin." Everyone nodded.

Chris was still scared. Terrified, in fact. Something horrible may be happening to Martin at that very moment. He might not even be alive.

But Chris wasn't alone. He never would be. No matter what happened, those who remained would stick together, and that was enough.

For now, it had to be.

Because as they all scrambled about, trying to find where Zach lived, deciding how to get there, listening to Chris' plans for what to do when they arrived, they all knew, deep down inside:

Though they had all walked away from calamity, they were heading straight for a new one. The worst was _probably_ yet to come.

.

.

.

events from _Just a Few More Years_, for those in need of a refresher.


	7. 7

It was Zach's eleventh birthday. He had decided to throw the party for it at a pizza restaurant in the mall, one of those with a snotty ball pit and an irritating plastic slide that the bullies shoved and dragged the weaker kids into, and an arcade where only half of the machines worked properly, and an intermittent show of dancing, singing animatronics. Zach had chosen that place because he wanted to ask employees about the robots, maybe even get to see them work up close. He had invited most everyone from his grade, but nobody showed up, except the Kratt brothers, but they were among the few never invited. Chris had overheard the conspiring of his classmates to ditch the party because Zach was a "loser," so the two brothers decided to come out of pity, but Zach angrily tried to kick them out. In his tantrum he attempted to throw his cake at them, only for it to fall apart in his hands, and coat his shirt with frosting and doughy, chocolate chunks. Everyone laughed, the brothers, the employees, even his parents.

Zach always knew deep down already, but it was on that day when he decided, definitively, what he was going to be. That was the day Zach became determined he'd prove them _all_ wrong.

Zach knew it was that eleventh birthday. He didn't see the robots up on the stage, he didn't hear their songs or the sounds of the arcade, he didn't smell the crappy pizza or rampant miasma of body odor. But he knew all the same.

He was sitting at the head of a long, long table topped with cheap waxy tablecloth. No one was there, the metal chairs were uninhabited, the paper plates were undressed, the plastic utensils were untouched - except for at one place. At the other head of the table, impossibly far away, was Martin, fully an adult, not 15 like he was on that pivotal day, eating a big piece of chocolate cake. The cake looked delicious. There was none of it elsewhere, not even Zach had a slice. Zach was hungry. He wanted it so badly, but it was far out of reach - however, over time, the table was ever so slightly compressing in its length, and Martin and the cake were gliding closer and closer to him. He knew all he had to do was bide his time, and maybe he could steal Martin's slice, right out from under his nose.

"What are you doing here?" Zach asked, meaning to pass the time, or distract Martin, or something.

"Oh, well, you know, I didn't really have anywhere else to go after you blew us out of the sky." He shrugged, stuffing his face with another forkful of that chocolatey goodness.

"That wasn't me." Zach huffed. "That was Nora!"

Martin shook his head and sneered. "Excuses, excuses."

"Why do you have cake?" Zach asked.

"What," Martin said, "I can't have any?"

"Not if I don't!" Zach protested.

"Zach, you already had a slice." Martin said.

"No, I didn't! You have the only cake!"

"That's impossible," Martin said, now positioned twice as close to Zach as he was at the start. "This slice came from _somewhere_. If you want another, just go cut one for yourself."

"The rest of it isn't here!" Zach exclaimed. "I picked it up and threw it at you!"

"No, you didn't." Martin said, who was almost close enough to be robbed. "You already had a slice, and nothing's stopping you from getting another."

"Now, nothing is!" Zach cried. "I'm going to take _your_ slice!"

Martin stopped eating, and looked up with his intensely angry blue eyes, which flashed like raindrops caught in the streaks of a lightning bolt in a raging winter gale. He put the fork down on the table, and in an instant, his slice of cake melted away into a black, metallic ooze and slipped off the table.

"Whatever, I don't have time for this." Martin rose from his seat, but instantly doubled over, and turned into a pile of bones. Just as they had become close enough to reach, the cake was gone, Martin was gone, but Zach's hunger was not.

Zach reached for a femur on the table, and drew it up to his face, opened his mouth, and -

Zach snapped awake in a cold sweat. He was alone in his home, with no cake, no Martin, and no hunger.

_I'm sick of these stupid dreams_, he thought.

He yawned. He had been sleeping quite poorly - of course, he had always had a restless mind that toiled and tumbled away with ideas into the dark of the night, but recently he couldn't seem to get substantial shut-eye no matter how hard he tried. There were just those horrid nightmares keeping him up, and Martin was always in them, taunting him, foiling whatever he wanted in them at the last second.

_That's not how it is anymore. I won this time!_ He thought, bitterly. He reminded himself of that every night. He won. The rat lost. But that never seemed to remedy things.

Thus he was still skeptical of the prospect of falling back asleep, despite how very, very tired he was. There were still plenty of hours left in the night, ample time for him to have another one of those wretched nightmares.

He decided to go into his study to brainstorm.

Zach's house was bleak, bare and striking. It was one of those very modern designs, comprised of large rectangular chambers that never met one other at a 90 angle. It was white, black, grey, red and nothing else, full of only abstract and geometric art pieces, and not carpeted anywhere at all. It was spacious, personal effects were few and far between, and the windows and entryways were all large and plain. It was in a gated community, a stupendously wealthy one, and he had overseen the construction himself. He remembered neighbors fussed that it didn't keep with the aesthetic of "regular suburbia," but Zach was quick to point out that no one in "regular suburbia" has multi-million dollar mansions with security systems costing half as much. Needless to say he was not popular.

He didn't care. Well, he did, but mostly because their disdain fueled the spite he had for the world, the spite he relished in.

He walked silently along a massive hallway. It was a lot of house for one man. His lonely echoes traced the space he ambled through, like they were the beams of a flashlight illuminating the path ahead, casting dark shadows into the path behind. He could of course at any time summon a Zachbot to keep him some lesser form of company, as they were sealed away in compartments hidden behind the walls all around the house, and they were all either activated by voice, though they would also come out if the alarm was triggered.

And that's exactly what happened.

As if an axe had been swung into the flesh of still night, breaking apart all its calm condition, a high-pitched siren began blaring, red flashing lights on the ceiling coated the walls in startled crimson tones, making colorless the aspects of the house already colored as such, and those robots poured out of the walls with a cacophony of tenor mechanical chirps and clanks.

"Hey! Cancel! Get back in there, it's just me!" Zach shouted, flapping his arms in the air, thinking he had accidentally set off the security system with his commotion - his programming always had little kinks like this he'd need to iron out, but he quickly realized that this might not be the case this time around. They were designed to lock onto whatever had set them off, whether it was an opened window or a figure spied on the security cameras, and swarm it, and they were certainly not chasing after _him_, but were instead all streaming down the hallway, in the direction Zach was already walking. Brows arched askew, Zach followed the stream of robots, sandwiched between those that had emerged and began their advance from where he was, and those arriving from rooms behind him.

It led him to the atrium, where he found quite a befuddling scene. Robots were crashing into one another, swinging their arms wildly, getting themselves smashed into pieces on the ground, all over nothing. Nothing at all seemed to be there.

"This is some glitch!" He scoffed.

But right as he said that, as if the scene were blessed by the hands of some deity of mockery and irony, one of Zach's robots shot its arm out at what it saw pass in front of it, and clasped the end of it just before it streaked away, and in one fell swoop it yanked from hiding the source of the illusion; in a wave of synthetic emerald scales the body of a man-sized chameleon was wrenched from its invisible state.

"Green guy!" Zach recoiled, as Chris Kratt stared him down with those alien, bulbous eyes that domed out from the face of his chameleon form, swinging back and forth by the tip of his tail, which was firmly clutched by the lucky robot. "What are you doing in my house!" Zach shrieked with his shrill disgust. Instead of responding, Chris expelled his lengthy tongue, latching it onto the side of another robot; he then retracted it, and the two zachbots, the one he held and the one that held him, crashed into one another, with Chris twisting around, either aimlessly or expertly, to avoid the collision. He landed, the feet of one flank on the floor, the others up on the wall, poised to be ready to strike at more robots, but when he turned his attention to one at his front, and one at his exposed side, using his independently swiveling eyes to track them, he was still surprised by a third at his rear, who snatched his tail once again and yanked him into the air, while one of the other two he was keeping his eyes on seized the opportunity to grab his muzzle, sealing his mouth and thus his best weapon inside it. But before the robots could drag their catch to their master, the front door was busted open, revealing a massive figure in its wake, silhouetted inhumanly by the distant moon. From beside this figure an orange blur shot out and decimated the nearest bot by digging its claws into the weak seams. As the robot began to sputter and fall from the sky, the orange intruder leapt from it, and onto another bot, repeating the same method of slicing, then moving onto another, and another, and another, and then, after five in total had been ruined, the attacker reached the robots gripping Chris and demolished them forcefully, ultimately touching down on the ground with such power that she had to press one hand against the ground and stick the other arm out to her side to hinder her own momentum. It was Koki, bearing a body of cheetah spots.

There were other bots, but they stood down. Zach's security forces had been thoroughly routed, most of all by the stomping entrance of the one who knocked down the door with her intimidating keratin horn. It was Aviva who marched in, in the form of a rhino. The three teammates joined up alongside one another and approached Zach, who had fallen to the floor in the commotion.

"Y-y-you set off my alarm!" Zach stammered. "The cops will be on their way!"

"Actually," Aviva smirked, "on average cops normally take about 45 minutes to respond to unsubstantiated break-ins, assuming them usually to be false alarms." She crouched and leaned forward. "And I doubt your neighbors called the cops either, what with all the disorderly tinkering I'm sure you do here."

"What do you want?" Zach asked, thinking in his frantic and cowardly mind, _please, please, please don't let it be revenge._

"We want to know," Chris asked, deactivating, slipping back seamlessly into his own skin, "where Martin is."

"What?" Zach asked.

"Chris, what are you doing? There are still Zachbots here!" Koki said in hushed desperation.

"You guys watch my back, let me handle this." Chris said, going off script from what they had planned, which surprised everyone. There was something Chris saw in Zach's eyes that told Chris what he needed to do to get what he wanted out of his enemy. "Zach, let's go somewhere else. To talk."

Zach nodded fearfully. The three stood and watched him as he scrambled to his feet. They wandered in suspicious silence throughout the house to look for a suitable place to stop and talk, and eventually ended up in the study Zach was originally going to anyways. Zach was made to stand, while Chris sat at the desk, and the two girls stood at the door to dissuade any of the robots from intervening.

"Martin." Chris leaned forward, and furrowed his brows. "Where is he?"

"I don't know." He fibbed.

"Really?" Chris said. "Because, we were in Antarctica, you see, chasing after _you_, and something attacked the Tortuga, and we crashed. Martin went to get help, but he never came back. One terrible crash, one missing brother, one villain who has the resources to pull off both. It all leads to you, Zach."

"But what... about Nora Donovan, and Axel Neely? They were there in Antarctica too, I'll bet they did it!"

"Oof, you're tripping up, Zach." Chris grinned wickedly. "Those names were never made public information. How did you know about them?"

"Well- I- I'm a hacker, you see, and I- I hacked into the database of- well- the Raptor Commission, and I pulled the files-"

"Wait, what's the Raptor Commission?" Chris asked, no longer baiting, now genuinely confused.

"It's - the - uh -" Zach was visibly shaking. "The, uh, task force... looking into... this. I stalk your lives, okay?" This was, at the very least, partially true.

"Wait... the one lead by Paul Hubbard?"

Zach grew even paler than usual.

"The one that's, like, the secretest of secretive, who didn't even tell us what they were called? Who have covered up this whole thing? How do you know about them? How could you have managed to hack them?"

"I - uh -"

"You work for them, don't you?"

Zach tensed his shoulders. "They're a client, okay? I make weapons for them, that's it!"

"And they don't wanna fund the search for Martin because they're covering your ass." Chris said through gritted teeth.

"Huh-uh..." he blubbered.

"Hmmm, they might not like it that you let that slip, Zach."

"Yeah, well... they won't like it that you're looking into this either! I was told you were told to _butt out_."

"Yeah, here's the thing." Chris said. "I don't care about that. I've got nothing to lose if they find out. You, on the other hand? How many times have they bailed you out of trouble? How many times have they backed you up? You know their power, their influence, and it's been in your corner the whole time. _Imagine the damage they could do to you if they turned against you_."

Zach gulped again. Chris rose from his seat, his hands planted like tree roots to the desk. Zach heard a snarl from Koki through the door, which let him know they were listening.

"I know you were in Antarctica. I know you were working with Nora and Axel. Whether you're Hubbard's double agent or just that stupid, I don't know, and I honestly do not care. So unless you want to be on Paul Hubbard's hit list, or in Koki's claws, or on Aviva's horn, you're gonna tell me." He inhaled, shaking with rage. "_Where. Is. Martin_."

There was an old research facility off of the gulf coast of Texas, near an island city called Galveston. It was underwater, but not in waters too deep, maybe about a quarter of a mile below the surface. It was meant to study the shifting structures of the Benthic zone, but the frequent hurricanes in the region made investors nervous, so funds were pulled and the structure was sold off to an anonymous buyer. There it sat, a space meant for twenty researchers, occupied by a single scientist tasked with continuing work on the mysterious owner's equally mysterious project in complete seclusion, only getting occasional visits from his colleagues, Nora Donovan and Axel Neely. For some reason, this scientist had a grudge against Martin, so Nora, in her boundless sadistic drive, took him there just to see what would happen.

"That's where Martin is." Zach said, after telling Chris all this.

"Write it down." Chris demanded.

"Write down all of that?" Zach complained.

"No! Where the base is. The address, or coordinates or whatever." Chris grabbed a notepad and pen and threw them at him.

"I don't have that! They don't trust me enough, it's just... in Galveston."

"Fine," said Chris, who had sat back down partway through Zach's account. He rose again. "Thank you." He jeered.

"I hope you all die there." Zach said.

Chris moved out without saying a word, or looking him in the eye.

"Hey! Don't act like you're so better than me!" Zach growled. "You're just... you're just a bully, like the rest of them!"

Chris stopped in the doorway.

"You're just a brute like all the others, who can't live with the fact that geniuses like me who you walked all over are doing better than you in life! Go get your brother for all I care, and keep chasing after your stupid animals, see what good that does you. I'll just be here with all _my_ successes, laughing, because I overcame all my challenges, while you just spin yourselves in circles! You can keep trying to get in my way if that makes you feel better, because you can't stand it that I've won, and _you've lost!"_

Chris stood there in silence. Zach clenched his fists and heaved through gritted teeth as he came down from his outburst, waiting, just waiting for his hated foe's surely inevitable retort and sendoff that he always found to be so smug, so arrogant, so self-righteous and self-congratulatory.

Instead, Chris just sighed, without moving at all. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, "that you live like this."

Chris exited the study. Zach did not shout anything after him. He did not follow him out of the house. He fell to his knees and wailed like a toddler, curling up into a ball on the floor, shedding his bitter, spiteful, lonely tears. Chris heard this meltdown, as it echoed along those stark and rigid walls. If it were anyone else, he would have turned around and followed the cries to the source, in order to comfort them out of their distress.

But it was Zach Varmitech. Chris kept walking.

.

.

.

Martin had been awake pretty much the entire time, so he was surprised to find himself rousing out of unconsciousness. It was still dark.

Martin could not move, but not like it had been before. He _could not move_. Not his legs, his arms, his hands, his head, he could not even speak. It was distressing - he pushed and pushed with his mind to do something, anything, but nothing responded, it all lay there like deadweight.

He could move his eyeballs, and that was it. He darted them about frantically, trying to find where the goat man was, which he did quickly, though it was only by the tip of his horns. Wilfred was crouched on the floor mostly out of sight, his hands covering his appalling face. He was weeping.

Martin wanted to say, "who are you?" But words would not rise. That's when his attention was caught by something else - footsteps approaching. Then, a figure stood over him - a woman, who he did not recognize.

She had beauty - a long, slender, pale face, dark hair, though not quite black, nonetheless silky and streaming like the cosmos, and eyes, icy and blue, almost silver, like a pair of moons. He felt drawn to her, but not in a way of attraction or sympathy, but more in a way of morbid curiosity, like she was a devastating traffic accident he could not look away from. Her moon-eyes were not waning or waxing, her lips did not twitch at the sight of him, she seemed completely unaffected by the sobbing monster next to them. She moved like a ghost, a hexed cadaver, seeming so lacking in life that even in the midst of these disheveled, mortal, weakened bodies, she came across as a corpse among angels. She had the beauty of a living being, but without the heart to make her beautiful.

"Oh, you poor thing." She said. Her voice was demure but emotionless. "He's dragged you in to all this, hasn't he? Well, I suppose I could let him keep you, if that will prevent him from stepping out of line. Look at him, I have to give him _something_ that he wants. I'm sorry, I know, it's too bad for you. I can understand how that could make you unhappy with me, so you won't see me again."

She produced a syringe, and Martin could only follow with his eyes, screaming on the inside _stop_ and _help_ and _let me go_and _don't_ as she plunged it into his arm and deposited whatever fluid it contained.

She stepped away from him and moved, still so much like a phantom, to the mewling Dr. Wilfred. She grabbed him by one of his horns. "Get up." She said, as she pulled him up. "I'm doing you a huge favor here, you know."

"Yes ma'am."

"I won't regret it, I hope?"

"No, ma'am."

"Good, good. Our little smuggler friends will be dropping in to give you all they've gathered on -"

Whatever she put in him had fully overtaken his bloodstream, and he was once out again before she could finish her sentence.


	8. 8

8

The crew didn't spend much time back in Las Cruces, only stopping by the warehouse to fix and retrieve what they needed. Jimmy's rental car wasn't authorized to go out of state, and the devices they planned on bringing would certainly never be allowed on an airplane, so they had to repair the Createrra; thankfully, the last of the specialty parts they had ordered for it were there in a box right outside the front door, apparently having been delivered while they were away. From there it was a matter of putting the pieces back together, and in the hands of that crew, it was a simple matter indeed.

Before heading out, everyone made sure to grab their swimming gear, and the DNA samples the crew had borrowed from the nearby zoo, in Alamogordo - Chameleon, Cheetah and Rhino. It came across as pretty odd when they had requested it, but of course the Wild Kratts were well known in the circles of zoology, so when they asked for little things like that they weren't usually turned down, no matter how random those asks seemed.

Aviva decided to fix the MIK on the road, just so they could spend as much time moving forward as possible. It was a twelve hour drive from where they were to where they needed to be, and after a quick debate it was decided that the best course of action would be to go straight there, the whole way, without stopping at a hotel for a night and picking up the next day. They could just take turns driving and resting, because Martin could not and should not have to wait any longer, even if it was for everyone else to get an essential sleep.

They drove through vast beige deserts, speckled with shrubs on the sand, plumed with skyward spires of Yucca and interwoven with purple plateaus covered in a patchwork of cloud-shadows, as well as unending, undivided flatlands that sported mere scraps of plant life. They passed through towns big and mostly small, clean and mostly dirt-poor, at one point skirting along the border with Mexico, looking into the city of Juárez, and her multi-colored houses all clustered on the slope of the Franklin Mountains. Further on, they sometimes passed through places on their way to becoming ghost towns, with abandoned gas stations and farm houses left in vacant, wind-swept decay, and only one or two occupants limping along to keep the corpse of their community from being buried. There were most often vast stretches without any signs of civilization at all, aside from their fellow travelers on the highway, black cattle herds that grazed behind short wire fences, and long orange cargo trains that chugged along parallel to them. They were of course moving too quickly to notice any substantial amount of wildlife, though there were plenty of birds gliding above, and Chris spotted a couple of Pronghorn Antelopes bounding effortlessly through someone's field of cotton.

Whenever they made their short stops, particularly when they stopped to get a meal or two, was when things felt the most normal, like they were just a group of friends on a road trip. They could sit and talk and enjoy each other's company over some good food, in usually warm and welcoming places. But every so often the mood was brought back down by just that deep hole they all knew was there, this missing piece that was the reminder of the terrible truth - it was almost just as bad not having Martin there to be the ball of sunshine, the bright genuine laughter amongst the pleasantries, as it was to know he was somewhere deep underwater, likely being tortured by a crazed lunatic.

Aviva in particular was on the quieter side - of course, this was mostly because she took every opportunity she was given to work on the MIK on flat, stationary land, though in observing her Chris couldn't help but worry that she might be continuing to blame herself in some way. She was still avoiding questions, burying herself in her work, shutting out everything else, when normally she was quite talkative, even when inventing.

As everyone drove and slept in shifts, like what they had done in the Tortuga, only with less crippling coldness, fear and isolation, Chris was chosen to first sleep because he had hardly gotten any rest at all since he first woke up in New Jersey. But again, since it was in a turbulent vehicle, he never actually got any meaningful, restful sleep, though he feigned it, shutting his eyes as long as he could to discreetly hide away his active and frantic mind. However, this coverup did not convince the crew, as when it was his turn to drive they denied him the position, deeming him too clearly exhausted and distraught to be safely behind the wheel; instead, Jimmy took up a second round of driving, and Chris was posted once again in the back seat to try and snooze. This time around, funnily enough, was when he finally succumbed to his heavy, tired eyelids and found himself drifting off. He didn't even notice it happening, as the two hours that had gone by felt only like two minutes once Aviva gently nudged him awake.

"Chris! Chris, we're here." She said.

They had reached the city of Galveston. He sleepily stretched himself and turned to examine it out the car window. It was not exactly what Chris expected; he had looked up the city soon after the confrontation with Zach and mostly saw things on the internet about its piers and beaches and big aquarium. Chris was anticipating a city that existed solely to support an economy of tourism and beach-bummers, with trendy restaurants and shopping areas and lots, lots of souvenir stores, but instead the town was an old, haunting sort of beautiful, filled with rows of victorian era homes shrouded in sheets of Spanish Moss. Chris didn't believe in ghosts, and yet he could feel unseen eyes upon him through the hurricane-tarnished walls and windows, and whispers of bad omens in the trees. Maybe it was already his uneasy mind, or maybe it was the cloak of night; Galveston was already deeply enshrouded in darkness. Again Chris did not whole-heartedly believe in supernatural forces, but he did get a slight spooked shiver when he checked the time and noted that it was around 3:00 AM, the supposed witching hour.

"Okay," Chris said, trying to ignore his own sinking feeling and scrape off the sleep that still clung to his insides, leaning forward and laying his elbow on the side of Koki's seat. "Where do we go from here?"

Koki fumbled a bit with the regular smartphone that she had brought since the network for the creature pods was not operational. She pulled up the navigation route she had devised herself, since, as she explained to them, map applications didn't exactly show where secret, mostly abandoned research facilities were, so she had to do a lot of digging into real estate and financial records to find its location, and set a course to it.

After about 45 minutes of driving through decreasingly suburban and historical homes, as they slowly vanished and were replaced with thick brush, Koki mentioned, "it's going to be on our right, in about half a mile; it probably won't be marked on the road, so slow up a bit."

Jimmy slowed the car until Koki told him to stop. They all got out, and were sure enough met by a chainlink fence that was mostly hidden in large waxy foliage, bearing one of those red and black private property, no trespassing signs, though this one was rusty and a bit bent, and its paint was chipped. Chris could immediately hear the thundering waves and singing gulls, and smell the salt and seaweed. The wind was whipping up, and he could feel what was either sea spray spurred on by the breeze or slight precipitation. It was cold, but not Antarctic cold, only slightly nippy. The crew got everything from the back of the car; power vests, wetsuits, oxygen masks, (the last two they had also brought of Martin's) and other various things.

"Okay, Jimmy," Aviva said, "why don't you drive around, and find a place to hide the car. This road looks like it hasn't been travelled for years, so I doubt any cops'll patrol it any time soon, but still we want to be hidden."

"Wait, it's getting late, though -" Jimmy said, "why don't I run into town and find food for us, from a fast food place or something? There's gotta be something open 24-hours around here."

"Oh, yeah, I guess that works too, I am hungry. Just don't take too long, we'll want to wait until you get back before we head down to the facility." She replied.

"I just figured it could take a bit before Chris finds any animals we can use." Jimmy said.

Jimmy got back into the Createrra and began to pull away, as Chris scaled the fence, then helped the girls up and over. They followed a short dirt path through thick and dripping plants until they came upon the hidden beach. There was no moonlight at all, only black skies, black sands, black waves.

"Martin's down there." Chris muttered under his breath.

"Alright." Koki said, handing Chris a flashlight. "Do your thing."

Chris began to scour the rocks and shallow waters with his light for anything living. It would have been much easier if it were during the day, mostly because it was high tide right now, and he could feel with his feet that the submerged stones would've made great tide pools for holding potential creatures in them, but now everything was loose and open and viciously stirred, and in the dark, churning waters it was near impossible to spot something, even for someone as keen for finding animals as Chris, and especially for Koki and Aviva, who were inexperienced with that and were both searching only by the light of Koki's smartphone. As the search wore on, and everyone's clothes were slowly soaked, that once light chill became more of a burden, as 50 waters are not so deadly, but sloshing through them, getting at most up to your hips in them, is unpleasant after some time. It was all a bunch of dark stumbling and wading with no luck, no sign of life, and they were still empty-handed by the time Jimmy returned with food.

Everyone circled up on the driest, flattest part of the beach they could find, even though they still shivered terribly from their wet clothes. Jimmy had gotten them all tacos from a taco truck, which was much tastier than what the rest expected they'd get. As they were eating, Aviva scooted off to the side, and whipped out the MIK, and started working on it.

"Last minute repairs?" Chris asked. "Aviva, if you still need time, you can sit out and -"

"Oh no, I finished the MIK by the time we were in San Antonio." Aviva said. "This is, ah, secondary."

The circle was broken as everyone gathered around her in curiosity. She had out the plastic water bottle with the mysterious fluid in it that she had collected off the Tortuga's severed leg back in Antarctica.

"If there's any chance these... villains are here, I want to know how they operate - or at least, how this operates."

"Right, while you do that," Chris said, wiping crumbs from his mouth, then crumpling his food wrapping and napkins and putting into the bigger bag Jimmy had brought everything in, "I'm gonna get back to work." He picked up the flashlight and turned back towards the water.

"Good luck man!" Jimmy said.

"When you're all done, don't forget to put the trash in the car, so we can get rid of it properly later!" Chris shouted back. Jimmy gave a thumbs up. As this back and forth was happening, Aviva had unscrewed the water bottle and was carefully placing a small drop of the substance on a petri dish, and then under a magnifier that was in the tool kit.

"What are you seeing?" Koki asked, leaning over her shoulder.

"Not much." Aviva sighed. "The substance is so dense and dark, it can't be backlit, so I can't look into it with that much detail." The leaned away from the kit. "Not with the tools I have, anyway."

"Would it help if I just shined my flashlight directly on it?" Koki asked.

"Maybe a little." Aviva said. Koki did that, and Aviva looked a second time.

"Wait, that's weird." Aviva said.

"What, what is it?" Koki asked.

"What - no, no, no that's not possible!" Aviva continued, half-thinking out loud. "That can't be possible!"

"What?"

"It's cellular." Aviva said. "Like, it's still metallic, very much so, but they're formed into cells!"

"Wait, so..." Jimmy said, "you're saying that stuff is alive?"

"Not anymore." Aviva said. "The cells died a while ago, but still, this is - this means-"

"You don't think -" Koki said.

"_Aliens_." Jimmy said. The two girls paused, and turned to glare at him. "What, is that not where we were going with this?" Jimmy asked. Koki rolled her eyes. "Hey," he continued, "it makes sense to me!"

"No, what this means," Aviva said, "whoever made this stuff, Nora and Axel, or the scientist, or the person behind it all or whatever, has figured out how to create _life_."

"That can't be possible." Koki said.

"I mean, this stuff is super rudimentary life." Aviva said, taking another look. "I'm not seeing a lot of components to these guys, and quite frankly they look like plant cells more than anything else, but still..." she drew back one final time. "They're not natural. They're made of _metal_."

"But, this is crazy, right?" Koki posited. "I mean, someone making _life_?"

"Aviva invented time travel." Jimmy pointed out.

"Yeah, but that's... but I mean..." Koki stammered.

"I don't get it either." Aviva said. "And I certainly don't like it. Yeesh, whoever we're up against..."

"GUYS!" Chris hollered from across the beach. "I FOUND AN ANIMAL!"

"Already?" Jimmy asked. "I thought it would take him longer."

"It's all luck, I guess." Aviva grunted as she got up. She was planning on meeting Chris where he was, but once she was all the way standing, she saw what everyone else had been watching the whole time - Chris sprinting at them full speed, his hands outstretched in front of him, clasped together and dripping wet.

"I guess it's small." Koki retorted.

Chris came up panting, and where he stopped and stood, he slowly and carefully raised his left hand from atop his right, to reveal a small, oval-shaped shelled crustacean, only about two inches across its longest axis. It tried to scurry away, but Chris very gently clutched it by the sides of its shell, and lifted it, its surprised limbs swimming about in the air. "It's Emerita Talpo - no, no, Emerita Benedicti!" Chris looked up with a glimmer in his eye. "The Atlantic Mole Crab!"

"It's so little!" Aviva exclaimed. "How did you spot it?"

Chris shrugged. "I just caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, and went for it."

"Well," Aviva said, sitting back down at the MIK, "let's make a Mole Crab power suit!"

Chris sat down beside her and began very enthusiastically telling her all about the mole crab - its digging ability, filter feeding, limited but still existent swimming capabilities, eyesight, and so on, all the while allowing the little crab scurry around his arms and back and shoulder, without letting it jump off or reach the ground and run away.

It took about 15 minutes of fact-sharing, observance and analysis until Aviva had enough information to begin working out a power disc. "Okay, this'll take me a minute or two."

"You ready to go get Martin, little guy?" Koki asked, leaning in at the crab, who was at the moment perched on Chris' shoulder.

"Hey, are we gonna name him?" Jimmy asked. "I know that's normally Martin's thing."

"Yeah, it is." Chris sighed, looking off sadly.

"What about... er..." Koki struggled to come up with possibilities.

"Maybe... no..." Chris said, having similar difficulties.

"Crabby?" Aviva asked.

"It Martin found out we named a crab _Crabby_, we'd never hear the end of it." Koki laughed.

"It was a _suggestion_!" Aviva light-heartedly snapped.

"Bob?" Jimmy asked.

"Bob? _Really_?" Said Chris.

"Or Steve!" Jimmy said.

"I like Steve." Aviva said. "Steve the crab."

"Eh, it's better than Crabby." Chris said. Steve scuttled onto the back of Chris' head. "Steve the crab. The one who's gonna save Martin."

"It's done!" Aviva exclaimed. With a beep and a whir, three blue discs rolled out of the machine. "Chris, don't forget to put Martin's oxygen mask in your power suit too, so it melds with the transformation and you can bring it with you."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Chris said, taking his disc from her. Then he paused, and looked up suspiciously. "Wait, you're sure that'll work, if it's Martin's, and not mine?"

"Oh yeah, there's no reason it wouldn't." She replied.

"Alright."

"Okay, so," Aviva said, "this place is going to be really big, so... ugh, as dangerous as it is, our best chance of finding Martin is to split up. If it were the four of us I'd have us divide on a buddy system, but... this gives us the best odds. I guess, when we get in the water, Chris, you move to the right, Koki, veer left, and I'll look over the top of it. Since we'll have such good eyesight, getting lost in the water shouldn't be a problem, it's just - once you get inside, let's try to find eachother as soon as we can."

"Sounds like a plan to me!" Koki said.

"Right. Once we get into the ocean," Chris explained, "there could be predators. Mole crabs don't have a lot of defenses for open-water swimming, so stay sharp, and be smart. Even regular fish could come after you, so don't just look out for sharks and dolphins." Everyone nodded. "Okay. We're doing this." Chris took a deep breath. They put on their wetsuits and power suits and all stood in a circle, putting one of their hands in the center, touching eachother's finger tips with the palms up to the sky. Steve skittered onto all three hands.

"Activating creature powers on three- for Martin!" Chris said, hovering his other hand over his activation button, trying to pump himself and the rest of the team up, like they were a sports team right before a big game. "One - two - THREE!"

In a slam of the button and a flash of green light, the world zoomed up and away from him as he shrunk down towards the sand. It was a sensation he'd felt many times before, though it took him a split second to orient himself to the powers specifically of the Mole crab's. He could see all around him, the eyes were indeed very good. There in front of him was Koki as a crab and an Aviva as a crab, and in the middle was Steve, now as big as the rest of them and very confused. He darted away.

"Thanks, Steve." Chris said. "Now -" he turned to face the ocean. The waves, even the little ones rolling onto the beach, looked as tall as mountains. Mole crabs weren't made to run head-first into crashing waters, but it was their best shot. It was their _only_ shot. " - let's go."

The trio of crabs charged straight at the wall of water, to where Martin was, connecting with its biting breadth and beginning their descent into the dark deep.


	9. 9

9

Mole crabs were _absolutely_ not meant to run head-first into crashing waters. The second they contacted the tide, they were snatched and tossed about by the current, being spun and flipped over every which way, and sucked like dust in a vacuum out into the ocean. Chris was thankful for his hard shell, because of how many times he had been dashed onto rocks.

Finally Chris' tumbling slowed, and he found himself drifting in the open sea.

He reoriented himself, checked to see where Koki and Aviva were, and began a bobbing swim downwards, to a massive structure below. The building itself was quite large, maybe about the same size as a public highschool in a big city, though not shaped as such. From the outside you could clearly see pathways, hallways, and side-rooms shooting off and curling around the outside of it, like all its internal organs had been ripped out and bleached and were just drifting beside its not gutted body.

Chris also saw no predators, no fish, not a thing. This horrible building, and whatever it contained, the creatures all knew to steer clear or.

It was slow going as Chris made his way into the depths. His little legs moved along no better than paddles in a rowboat, maybe even worse - while it was better than no motion at all, Chris knew he would have made much more progress as a dolphin, or even a little fish. With every passing inch between himself and the underwater laboratory, Chris only wished more that he could just be there already.

Chris suddenly had a startling thought, one that hadn't occurred to him before.

_How long can a Mole Crab hold its breath?_ He realized that was a piece of information that was missing from his repertoire, and in his hurriedness to make it to Martin, he had forgotten to consider it. He didn't feel like he was running low on air, and was about two thirds of the way when the fear first hit him, so logically he told himself he probably didn't have anything to worry about. But it would be a different story entirely if they couldn't find a way into the research facility, and wasted all their time and oxygen looking for one.

But when he was close enough to see the finer details of the laboratory, those anxieties were quickly dispelled. The place was ramshackle, with plenty of exposed panels, broken hatches and cracked foundations, in short, full of opportunities for a small crab to squeeze in. Chris settled on fitting into a broken pipe that was along the wall of the largest structure in the mangled complex.

It was old, rusty, filled with algae and small pieces of garbage; it was annoying how often Chris had to wrench out a bottle cap or shard of glass with his tiny claws to clear up a clog so he could pass, both because it was hindering his progress, and because it was a constant reminder of just how negligent human beings could be.

The pipe had a strange smell to it. It was like a combination of metal and vegetable rot and old people. Chris wasn't sure if it was just the crab power's interpretation of the senses it was getting, but it made him queasy, especially in coincidence with the rearrangement of all the trash and old, mushy seaweed chunks.

After several punishing minutes he came across a particular blockage, a very compact and dense one. It took all his strength just to whittle away at it, all its components were so thoroughly smushed together. There were of course shreds of seaweed and clumps of algae, in addition to sand, shells, pieces of an old chip bag, the top half of a plastic water bottle, scraps of a fishing net, a few fish hooks as well, one of which Chris would've skewered his hand on were it not for his protective claws, gritty scraps of wood, another bottle cap, and the head of a plastic doll that had become warped and drained of color, which unnerving to say the least. But as soon as the last bits of the garbage block were cleared, he felt a sudden but brief surge of water pressure which pulled him rapidly at a grate that waited behind the now dislodged junk. Further, all the garbage he had freed got pulled back in behind him, so he was now trapped. Thankfully, after a brief panic he discovered that the grate he was pressed against was brittle with age and wear, and it crumbled after a few solid scrapes from his claws and bashings from his shell.

Chris came up into a huge cylindrical water tank that perturbed him. He knew it would be massive even if he weren't a tiny crab, but that wasn't even the problem. It didn't feel as vast as the quarter-mile stretch of ocean he had just crossed, but it felt more alien and strange, what with its curved, smooth glass walls, extreme stillness and obvious finiteness. It was so big, yet he could see the end of it, and the end of it was all around him.

_Is this what it feels like to be in an aquarium tank?_ He had the brief thought, though he quickly countered it by remembering that most tanks at least try to replicate an actual oceanic habitat, whereas this was just a wasteland.

The water was not even clear, tiny black particles whizzed by him as he made his way as quickly as he could to the top of the tank. His crab instincts told him to suck them in and filter them through his mouth in case they were bits of food, but his human sensibilities were telling him to not do that, as, if they weren't edibles after all, who knows what awful things they could be, especially if they were in a creepy old place like this.

Chris reached the top of the tank, and found that a panel on one of the lights was loose. He crawled through it, and some subsequent mechanical crevasses, until he found himself outside, on the top of the tank, finally out of the water.

The room he came into was even bigger than the tank, maybe twenty, fifty times so. He deactivated, but even in his own, full-sized body, he was blown away by just this one chamber of the enormous facility.

There were only two lights out of many that were working, though one flickered and faltered, clearly on its last legs of operation. But they were enough to get a basic grasp of his surroundings, though his eyes still had a lot of adjusting to do after coming out of crab-vision, which was such a starkly different sense from his own human sight.

There were three other tanks, the same size, two to his left and one to his right. He realized that they looked more like giant test tubes than anything else, and they all had this black gunk in them that took up their space in varying degrees. The one to his right was almost completely occupied by it, with only a few meager pockets of visible water. Chris felt lucky to have entered the tank that he did, because he could tell just by looking at the disagreeable substance that trying to tango with it in vast quantities like that would mean certain doom, especially for a little crab.

Also to his left, on the furthest conjoining wall, was a massive dome-shaped window jutting out into the ocean. However, the sea was too dark, so nothing could be seen through it.

Above Chris' head, within reaching distance, was an elevated, suspended walkway that ran parallel to the line of tanks. Chris reached up for it so he could take it as a safe way to the ground, but when the bridge groaned mightily and immediately at his touch, he retracted his hand and looked about, his eyes now fully reacquainted with themselves and the dim lighting conditions. The facility was in a state of substantial disrepair, every inch of the place suffered from the worst case of water damage he had ever seen - after all, the ceiling was quite leaky, and salt water dripped all around him. The bridge above him no doubt suffered the same blights and neglect, which made it a very unsafe route to take. Under his weight it could surely snap and send him plummeting, and with the floor looking as slick and slippery as it did, Chris was not confident he could stick the landing. So instead Chris descended the side of tank itself, spreading his legs along its curve and edging his way down like he was a bear making its way down a redwood tree. Trees however have much more grip than a glass wall, and as he reached a spot where a good streak of water had accumulated, his hands slipped and he fell onto the floor and onto his back. Thankfully he was only 3 feet above ground right before, so the most he suffered was some bruises.

Chris rose to his feet, wiping his hands on his wetsuit. The tile floor felt disgusting, pretty much what you'd expect the floor of a waterpark bathroom to feel like.

_God, I can't imagine Martin having to stay in a place like this. He'd go insane!_ Chris thought. _Just wait bro, we'll getcha out of here._

Thankfully what Aviva had said about his cargo was true: the stuff he had brought along had been retained through his crab form, and was all right there with him, including Martin's oxygen mask.

He turned towards the only one way to go, a single hallway entrance. This hallway was ordinary in size, unlike the room it led away from, though it was just as dilapidated and ruinous. But here, _none_ of the lights were working, and the place just became darker and darker as Chris pushed on.

He could barely see the corridors as they began branching off into rooms and pathways, and was confident he missed a few potential turns. Almost every door he tried was locked, and almost every decision he had to make when he came to a fork put a knot in his stomach, as he worried over whether he had already passed his brother or was just getting farther and farther away.

_I hope Koki and Aviva are close behind me, because there's a lot of this place that needs searching__,_ he thought. He was also somewhat regretting giving the flashlight back to Koki, since everything was so dark for him. _Oh well, she'll make good use of it._

Chris was not a big believer in luck, or fate, but after all the confused winding and groping through what felt like an endless maze Chris somehow managed to stumble upon something incredible. As he was walking along, he heard the echoey semblance a deep breath. It startled him, and he froze in place, thinking in time the source would reveal itself to be an enemy who was coming just around the corner. But no fiend showed their face, and no further sighs were made, so cautiously Chris moved towards where he thought it came from, and upon turning that dubious corned himself, he found a room, one of many, but this one's door was miraculously open.

Trepidatious, Chris poked his head in.

There in the center of the room was what looked like a dentist's chair, and there, lying on it, was Martin.

His heart skipped a beat. There was his brother. _There he was. He had done it. He had found him._

"_Martin!" _Chris sharply whispered. No reply. Chris looked behind him to make sure he wasn't going to be snuck up on, then moved into the room, part-crouched, part-sneaking and part-running. He went up to his brother's side.

"Martin!" He said again, in more of a soft but regular tone than a whisper. "Hey, Martin, it's me, Chris! I'm gonna get you out of- Martin?"

Martin was breathing, and his eyes were open, but something was clearly wrong: he wasn't moving at all, even his ribs were static, which made Martin's breaths wheezy and slow. His eyes were glassy and did not blink, his expression was blank, he did not twitch a single muscle. Further, there was an IV bag linked up in his shoulder, but it was too dark to read its tiny text and see what it was, if it was a crucial blood transfusion, or hydration and sustenance, or some kind of poison.

"Martin? Oh god, Martin? Martin, what have they done to you?" He cried in fear. Of course there was no reply. He noticed Martin was restrained, strapped into the chair, so he undid the ties and freed Martin's limp wrists, which simply fell off the arm rests and dangled.

"_Can I even_ move you?" He asked helplessly, trying to look around with a misty gaze at anything, any clue at all that could tell him exactly what predicament he was in, and how he could fix it. But the room bore no such signs, and Chris was cursed to once again return to a state of helplessness.

But it was in that state of staring disheartened at his brother when something did catch his attention, that he hadn't noticed until now, thanks to all that suffocating darkness. It was Martin's eyes, which upon further inspection turned out to be moving - not the eyelids, but the irises and pupils; they were tracking Chris' movements quite fluidly and intelligently. Chris waved his hand back and forth in front of Martin's face, and Martin followed it precisely.

"Martin, you can see me... can you hear me?" He asked, quickly following it up with the instructions "look up for yes, down for no?"

Martin very clearly deliberately looked down.

"Smartass. In earnest, though, I need to know if you can hear me."

Martin rolled his eyes, then looked up.

"Oh, thank god. I thought they'd given you a lobotomy or something. Are you hurt?"

Martin looked down.

"You sure?"

Martin looked up.

"So what's happened? What's with you?"

Martin looked left then right.

"Right, right, yes or no questions only. Uh..." Chris grabbed the IV bag by its attatched pole and lifted it before Martin's face. "Do you need this? Do you even know?"

Martin looked up then down, and Chris understood what he meant. Martin did know, and he did not need it. Chris quickly pulled it out of him and thrust it to the side - though its wheels got snagged by an inconsistency in the tile floor, and it toppled over.

"Okay, I'm gonna get you out of here." Chris said again.

Chris had felt Martin's full deadweight before in various circumstances, so he braced himself for the heft, but upon dragging Martin out of the chair he found it was not as much as he had anticipated - Martin must have lost weight over the time that had passed. Chris was thrown off by this and found himself toppling to the ground over the superfluous force he had put in his knees, with Martin slumped limp on top of him.

"You're a _twig_." Chris said, almost horrified. Had Martin the ability to speak, he would have said, _"then the first order of business is getting me a burger,"_ but instead Chris just continued to hoist Martin onto his back, clutching those lifeless arms draped over Chris' shoulders, in frazzled and fretful silence. Chris proceeded slowly back the way he came, Martin's feet dragging along the floor behind them.

"Let's hope Koki or Aviva are nearby." Chris muttered, though he could see up ahead no trace of light that would indicate they were.

Ever since Chris had disconnected the IV bag, the poison of paralysis had been slowly dissipating from Martin's circulation. Its over-saturation was not sustainable without a constant source, just as a side effect of its overly and specifically engineered nature, so ever so slightly Martin was beginning to regain movement, even if it was the very littlest things at first. He was just able to wiggle his toes and tense his fingers and wrists when he let out his first breathy wheeze. Chris wasn't sure if Martin was in pain or finally trying to communicate something, but _Chris_ certainly needed a break, so he laid Martin down, propping him up against the wall, and knelt next to him.

"You're getting there, you're doing great!" Chris said. "What is it, what do you have to say?"

"Hoah..."

"Uh-huh. Looks like you're not there _completely_."

"Hoah... mahn..."

"Don't push yourself too hard, Martin."

"Khoath... man... behine hou!"

"Just take it easy, okay?"

Chris was so focused on his brother he hadn't noticed what was fastly approaching him until it slammed itself into his side, knocking him away from Martin.

"HRIS!" Martin wheezed out.

"What the hell..." Chris groaned, then yelled, louder, "_WHAT THE HELL?"_ Once he saw what had hit him. It was Wilfred, the man with a goat's head, staring down Chris, half-lowered like a poised-to-pounce animal, practically fuming and snarling.

"You can't take him!" The beast moaned. "_I'm not done with him yet!"_

Wilfred charged again, and Chris, so stunned was he by the morbid chimera that was before him, could only stick his hands up in self defense and grab Wilfred by the horns right before he completely connected his blow.

"Jesus Christ, what _are you?"_ Chris cried, struggling to maintain his grasp on the thrashing hybrid's horns.

"I am a MAN!" Wilfred shrieked. He began trying to punch Chris, but as Martin had correctly observed, he was not strong, he wasn't even average. His fists just harmlessly bounced off Chris' chest. He tried to choke Chris, but his feeble hands did little more than overwork their own joints. Chris slowly began to recognize that his foe, however frightful he was, was weak, so the constant-climber, creature-keeper, able-bodied Chris landed one solid punch on this villain's face, and that was all it took to knock him completely off.

But Chris was far from victorious.

There was a strange melodic laugh from somewhere deep in the shadows of the hallway.

"Aw, look at that, the _children_ are fighting."

Chris was hit again by something he couldn't see, blended in it was to the darkness around him. He was tossed even farther away from Martin, who was starting to move himself, but only at the speed and control of a melting candle. He looked helpless as ever.

Emerging from around the corner was someone, a woman, who only half of the brothers knew, but both of the brothers now feared.

"Are you... Nora?" Chris coughed through gritted teeth.

"Let's find out." Nora said. Chris faintly could see a large plume of pure blackness spiral towards him, this time grabbing him, lifting him up and slamming him back-first against the ceiling with such force that he instantly popped out of her clutches, though not before he could hear the sound of something cracking - he couldn't tell if it was a piece of the building, or a piece of himself. His head was spinning when he landed, but he knew he had to act quickly.

"Go away," Wilfred bellowed, "this doesn't involve you."

"Wilfred, _nothing_ involves _you_ anymore." She retorted. She whipped him away behind her with her plume.

Chris grabbed the Chameleon DNA from a little pouch where he'd stowed it. He slipped away into invisibility just in time for her to miss grabbing him and become confused at his stunt.

"Hey... where'd you go?" She asked. Martin also hadn't quite gotten what Chris had done, and had sloppily flung himself at the back of her leg, which only made her wobble a bit. She grabbed Martin around his waist with her metal-cellular ooze, and suspended him next to her in the air. "If you don't come out, I'll just rip big brother in half." She sneered. She pinched his cheeks with one of her regular hands. "Or maybe I could crush his little head, or twist it off, or-"

She was hit in the face with something cold and slimy - Chris' invisible tongue - and Martin, who had actually gained a bit more strength than he'd let on, grabbed her by the back of her neck with his farthest hand, and used his suspension in the air and that anchor to her throat to swing himself around and knee her hard in the back. She crumpled forward, sending Martin splatting onto the floor. She looked up and chuffed, but couldn't do much else before Chris, leaping from the ceiling and deactivating all at once, fell full weight onto her head, slamming it into the floor. She lay their, unconscious, in a pool of her own bubbling black ooze. Chris pulled Martin up out of it. Martin was still very unsteady, and after trying a bit to stand on shaking, wobbling legs with only support from Chris' forearms locked into his, he stumbled over awkwardly, only being held up by that same lifeline. Martin was guided to lean on Chris' shoulder.

"Thanks." Martin said, still a bit more breathily than he normally would.

"You can talk _now?" _Chris chuckled.

"Yeah. I was trying to say, 'goat man behind you.'"

"Eh, I probably would've just thought you had lost if you did. But seriously, who the heck was - wait a minute - where has he gone, anyway?"

As if on cue, a blaring sound ripped through the hallways, and strobing red and white lights flooded everything around them. It was such sensory dissonance compared to the still darkness he'd grown accustomed to that Chris scrunched up in reaction, dropping Martin to the floor.

"Ow." Martin said. This was an enormous difference from what Martin had gotten used to for the past _nine_ days, so Martin's head instantly hurt, and he went practically blind for a minute or two.

"Sorry, sorry," Chris grimaced as he moved to pick up his brother back up, who was scrabbling blindly and hopelessly at the floor. The siren continued to shriek and wail; its sounds were ungodly and unbearable, due no doubt to water damage done to the audio system. "At least we can see now." Chris said, his eyes finally catching up to the chaotic display of lights.

"What?" Said Martin, whose voice, eyesight and hearing had not caught up with anything.

Chris began fast-walking back down the hallway in the direction of the lights, and though it was initially, after one turn it was not the direction he came from - but he followed anyways; that strategy also kept him from joining up with the girls, but he didn't have the foresight to know that. He just wanted to move where he could see. Instead he was brought to a new room, another big one, though not quite as big as the first, with tossed over chairs, a big console and a flat window looking out into the water. There, hunched over a control panel of sorts, was Wilfred, with his same glazed goat face and brown blood dripping from his panting mouth.

"My existence is suffering... it was only fair that your's was too." He gasped.

"Martin didn't deserve any of this!" Chris cried. "_You're_ the monster!"

His beady eyes did not react in emotion, but he raised his head slowly. "Donovan did something to me... when she tossed me aside... I can feel myself dying."

"What?" Chris said.

"But now you'll all come with me... in eight minutes, this place with implode, and we'll all drown like _rats_."

"Not if we find a way out." Chris said. He spotted a sign that said EMERGENCY EXIT in big red letters, and had an arrow pointing in that direction. "Huh. That was pretty easy. You gave it a good try, though."

Wilfred laughed as he slowly slipped to the floor. He laid on his side. "She's gonna break you, destroy everything you know and love." He wheezed.

"Nora? We took her out already. Don't count on it."

"Heh... looks like you're coming with me after all. See you soon, kids." He lifted his head and bellowed like an animal, but the howl fizzled out into a whimper. Wilfred was dead.

Chris stood there, blankly horrified for a few seconds, until Martin tugged him on the arm. "Come on." Martin said. "Let's go."

The two followed the sign, and it lead them to a nearby room. There were what appeared to be little two-person escape submarines, though one had already been deployed, leaving an oval-shaped, water-filled opening in its place. Two remained, but it turned out they wouldn't do the boys any good after all. One of them Chris couldn't get into. The other one he could, but it would not start.

"They're too old." Chris muttered.

"So now what?" Martin asked.

Chris saw on the far end of the wall a button that said _Water Lock Release_.

"I can flood the whole room... and that would give us a way into the ocean. I guess... we could swim out." Chris said. "Wilfred said the place would implode, not explode, so as long as we got out soon enough, we may be able to escape the vortex that would make." He turned to Martin. "Are you... strong enough to swim? I have your oxygen mask."

"I mean, if you give me a tiny bit of time, probably."

"Good thing we've got six minutes." Chris said.

While Martin did some stretches, across the room, by the button, Chris pulled out the oxygen masks.

_Oh no_. Chris felt his stomach churn.

When slammed against the ceiling by Nora, Chris heard something break, and now, he knew what it was. Along the glass face of Martin's blue oxygen mask was a distinct silver crack.

Chris liked to think he could be objective. That when he needed to, he could look at the facts and make a good, unbiased decision that was not effected by emotions or opinions. But this was too much.

If Chris had the oxygen, he might be the one with enough strength to pull someone unconscious out of the ocean.

But Martin was a better swimmer.

But if Martin didn't have enough control of his muscles, it wouldn't matter that he was the better swimmer.

But if they lost Martin, it would have all been for nothing.

Chris turned to look at Martin. Martin gave him a hopeful, unknowing smile.

Martin was finally free of this torment, whatever it was, whatever it had been. Chris tightly gripped the rim of what was sowing so much discord in his heart. Of course if Chris said something, Martin would insist on taking the broken one. That was Martin, it was like their mother said, he would always be protective of his little siblings. But Chris wasn't the one who needed protection right now, right? Surely it was Martin, who had gone through so much, as a consequence of his own noble actions. Chris was suddenly no longer thinking about who could work best with the handicap, but who deserved it.

And Chris could not, in good conscience, let Martin have the broken mask.

"You ready?" Chris asked.

"As I'll ever be." Martin said.

Chris tossed a mask to Martin.

"Hey, wait, Chris, isn't this your mask?" Martin asked.

"Yup." Said Chris. He slammed his fist on the water lock button. And with a loud chunking sound, water gushed into the room, swirling at their feet and rising quite quickly. Martin shrugged and pulled the green mask over his face; Chris did too with the blue, watching the blurry silver line break up his view of the crashing waters, just as they came over him.

_Who knows, maybe you'll hold_. Chris thought at the thin, ruptured sheet that was between him and certain doom.

As they ascended things were at first fine. But the water pressure bore down on that glass face relentlessly, like an invisible knife expanding an open wound; the crack spread, and spread, and spread.

Chris fell behind, letting Martin get up past him. He seemed to be enjoying himself - the newfound freedom, the dancing light from a new dawn overhead, his means to it all being of all things one of his favorite activities, swimming - it put a warm, happy feeling in Chris' heart.

Just in time for the glass to shatter, and the cold water to catch him on a breath.


	10. 10

_Martin was having a thought._

_Things had been tough for him this year. There was always this tonal shift once you graduated from one school and moved on to the next, because you went from the very top of things, the oldest kids, the smartest kids, the kids everyone looked up to, to suddenly being back on the bottom, the youngest kids, the smallest kids, the kids everyone picked on, even though the work only got harder, and the stress only got fiercer. His freshman year in high school, that whiplash was worse than it had ever been. His classmates were all at their most insecure, their most fragile, their most secretive, and Martin suffered in that environment. It felt like no one had time for him, not even himself. There was just so much weight on him he hadn't known before, he felt too claustrophobic to try and be the cheerful and carefree kid he was at heart._

_But he always got the space he needed back home. It was still that wonderful little world where he first found that spark inside him, the joy and laughter that the rest of the world was so eager to extinguish; it helped that there was that one constant - Chris, his little brother, would always look up to him no matter what, with starry eyes and an excited smile. Chris was the encouragement Martin needed to keep dreaming, keep exploring, and keep growing. Martin wanted nothing more than to make his people happy, and Chris was the one who stuck by his side to remind him of that, that if it were just Martin, there was no reason to not let the world crush his spirit, but if Chris' spirit might be crushed too, it was absolutely essential to hang on._

_That's why Martin always dreaded going to sleep. He would fall away outside his control, and when he next woke it would be the beginning of a new school day, of time spent away from this stronghold of tranquility. His nights were always restless, both with the dread and anticipation for his oncoming, recurring burden, and the turmoil of all the preexisting stress that he had carried with him, and hidden from everyone else he loved during the evening. It was always a disheartening moment for him when he opened his eyes in the morning, especially if it was earlier than he should have, which was the case this one particular day. The room was brighter than it normally would be, so for a split moment he thought he had slept in, but he checked the clock and found the opposite was true, his alarm wasn't set to go off for another 15 minutes. He knew there was no way he could fall back asleep, especially not with so much light flooding in. At first he just sat, a typical habit, trying stubbornly to remain in the little hideaway he had transformed his half of the bunk bed into; walls were covered with posters of sharks and birds of paradise and extravagant mantises, string lights hung, though turned off at the moment, from the bed boards above him, in addition to a little rubber bat he put up one Halloween and never took down since, and around him was a ridge of plush animals. It was a time capsule, like an old photograph taken of childhood, that most boys his age would've done away with or updated by now to reflect their age, but Martin clung to it religiously. He knew it would be overhauled or removed outright some day, either when he grew out of it or moved away to a new, adult life. The sun, after all, always rises, to start a new, monotonous day. You either change with the times, or are defeated by them. At least, that's the lesson Martin thought the world was trying to thrust on him, that he thought he was obstinately resisting._

Martin rose from his bed to look out the window. Let's see this new day_, _he thought.

_Outside of what he concocted for himself and the interactions with his family, Martin's life didn't have all that much magic in it, but there were little miracles here and there, like this one. The reason the room was so bright was because it had snowed, a lot, and the sun was reflecting off it and into the windows. Martin felt a respite of relief, because the snow was much more than it normally would be this time of year, and it might be enough to cancel school for the day. Of course the first thing Martin wanted to do was tell Chris. He turned and bolted to the bed, and excitedly ascended the ladder._

_Chris!_

_Pssst, Chris!_

_Chris, wake up!_

_Come on, you gotta see this!_

_Chris, come on._

_Wake up._

_Please, please wake up._

_You have to Chris, please._

_The sun always rises. _

_Sure enough, dawn had stretched across the shore; black waves glittered in the morning light, the tide had pulled away to reveal a swirling system of glistening tide pools and sands painted with the reds of daybreak. _

_Chris, come on._

_I just got you back, Chris._

_You have to wake up._

_How could the universe be so cruel? He thought he had found a way to circumvent its lesson, to live life in high spirits, never having to let go of his happiness or spark. Yet here he was, having dragged his brother from the gulf that had tortured him, from the world that couldn't help trying to take away one last thing._

_Chris, please._

_Wake up._

_Come on, you gotta get up._

_Chris._

_You don't have to hold your breath anymore, we're okay._

_Chris, breathe._

_Wake up._

_We're okay._

_Wake up._

_Wake up._

_Wake up._


	11. 11

Aviva and Koki were able to find one another very quickly upon entering the facility. Koki came up through the drain of an old shower - though it was not nearly as repulsive as you'd expect; no one had used it in years, so the pipe was long since clean and bare, not to mention, because of its vertical orientation, no garbage had been dragged into them by the currents, so she didn't have to deal with any blockages. The worst thing she encountered was the mold on the shower's floor, but that slipped off her slick shell, and became nothing more than mush at her feet once she came back into her human form.

After only a minute or so of walking, she stopped dead in her tracks at the sound of scuttling in the ceiling above her, and not a moment later a small crab dropped from a vent, and Aviva materialized in front of her.

"I guess we should've given Chris the flashlight, then." Aviva said, seeing as how they collectively had both that and the Smartphone, thus all the sources of light for the investigation.

Koki shrugged. "We had no way of guessing who would end up with who. At least, if any of us is good at exploring dark and unfamiliar places, it's Chris."

Aviva smiled. "I guess so."

Even with the light the two were still not much better off at navigating than Chris had been; the facility was still winding and confusing, as always lots of doors were locked, and two flashlights were not as helpful as full, overhead light would have been. However, because they could see, the two girls were quite proficient at spotting little details, small artifacts left about that painted a narrative of the facility's history. Actual, useful information that would've provided insight into where Martin was kept was lacking, and even with what they had, it was still a narrative the girls couldn't always read: there were rotten, half-eaten vegetables piled up around the base of one door, a waterlogged, leather-bound journal sitting amongst wet, broken glass, whose pages were too soaked and blurred to read, and then - Aviva noticed something glinting as they turned a corner.

"What is -" she picked it up. It was a smartphone that was plugged into and charging at an outlet. It was an older model, with a cracked screen and a chipped blue case. She turned it on, and the wallpaper for the lockscreen was a picture of a family - one she recognized - smiling, standing arm-in-arm in front of a vista of red autumn trees. The phone had no service, however, just below their line of faces, actually covering the face of the youngest and shortest, was a notification.

_3 missed calls from Brosky Kratt, 5 yr ago_.

"This is - this can't be." She said.

"What is it?" Koki asked. She looked over Aviva's shoulder as Aviva typed in a code, and the phone unlocked. "Woah! How did know that?" Koki raised an eyebrow. "Can you break into any phone?"

"Koki, this is Martin's!" Aviva exclaimed.

"Wait, what? You're kidding."

"Yeah, it's definitely his, from way back when."

"Well, what's it doing here?"

"I don't know, Martin hadn't seen it since-" she stopped, and stared off blankly. "-he lost it in India." Aviva spun around. "Koki, I had always thought it got swept into evidence by those guys - well, the Raptor Commission, but... Zach said the person here had some grudge against Martin, you don't think -"

"One of the people from India?"

"It makes sense why they'd have this." She said. "And I encrypted it, so who ever this is couldn't have gotten into it - that explains why the notifications are still up - but have they really just held onto it, trying to unlock it this whole time?"

"Who do you think it was? That... Tendua guy?"

"No, well, maybe, I mean, I wouldn't put it past him, he was kinda a weirdo." Aviva stowed the phone away. "But it doesn't matter. It doesn't belong to him... them, whatever. I'll be taking it back."

The two girls carried on. Eventually they found themselves in the big room Chris had entered into; it was an obvious dead end, but it was filled with so many things that the girls couldn't help looking around. Drenched papers were scattered on the floor, there was a collapsable table on its side and bent metal chairs, but of course what peaked the girls' interest most was what were in the test tubes. They recognized their content pretty quickly.

Koki whistled. "That's a lot of that black stuff. I guess they're growing it here."

"I just don't get it." Aviva said.

"Really? Makes pretty good sense to me. You get a place out of the way that no one would bother looking into, and-"

"No, I don't get _this_. It's an enormous scientific breakthrough to have created cellular life, but why mass produce it? They're just cells, they can't have found any real benefits to them, right? Wouldn't they still, I dunno, be in a testing phase or something? This stuff can't be cheap... can it? So why make so much of it?"

"I mean, it was on the leg of the Tortuga when it crashed, maybe it's a weapon."

"I guess, but I don't know how. I don't know how it did all that stuff! Ugh, I was always better at inventing than biology, even when I was younger..."

"Aviva, I don't think your 8th grade biology teacher would understand _this, either_." She turned to gesture at the row of test tubes, but her eyes fell upon something in the farthest tank; it was merely unsettling when it first caught her eye, but her fear grew the longer she looked at it, and the closer she drew to it.

"Aviva -" she began.

"I see it." Said Aviva, who was right behind her.

It was the same black ooze as all the rest, but it was _shaped_ into something. An _animal_.

It wasn't a real animal, but it had the distinct form of one; four limps curled up by its side, a head with a long, thick snout and a closed pair of eyes. It was not very solid, and in a clear state of either decay or construction, as all its finer details were melted and malformed, and chunks floated around it.

"You think..." Koki trembled, "you think they..."

"They're trying to, at the very least." Aviva said.

"This is _insane_. This is insane!" Koki cried.

"I know, I know! What... what do we do?"

"What can we do?" Koki asked.

Aviva paced the floor. If this animal could really function, it was a scientific miracle. The greatest breakthrough since, well, most of Aviva's own inventions. But if it was being made by _these kinds of people_, who would attack the Tortuga and leave them to die in the arctic, violently abduct one of the most caring guys you could ever get to know, and move forward with their experiments with no regard for the natural world, maybe it was a breakthrough that shouldn't be allowed.

But before Aviva could even begin formulating a plan of reaction, a siren began blaring.

"What is that?" Koki yelled, startled greatly. "Did we set off the security? Do they know we're here?"

"I don't know! It could also be Chris!"

A garbled voice came pouring from a PA system. It was something recorded long ago, and because of the water damage everywhere else, the woman's words only resonated that one room.

"_Self-destruct sequence initiated. All personnel, please make your way to the nearest escape subs immediately. Self-destruct sequence initiated. All personnel, please make your way to the nearest escape subs immediately_." She repeated herself over and over and over, her words gurgling and buzzing through the degraded speakers.

"WHAT?" Aviva screamed. "Is this a glitch? Please, tell me it's a glitch!"

"We have to go!" Koki cried.

"No, not without Chris, not without Martin!" She said.

"We'll all die anyways if we stay here!"

"We don't know! We don't know if this is even real!"

"We can't risk that!" Koki yelled. Aviva said nothing. Koki grabbed Aviva by the shoulders. "You said you didn't want to lose anyone else, right? So don't lose yourself, too!"

"I can't leave them here!" Aviva began to sob.

"Aviva, look at me. This is the Kratt brothers we're talking about. I'll bet Chris has already found Martin and those escape subs and they're on their way out right now."

"I - I can't..." she began to sob, but then, her face lit up. "Wait, how could I forget, Cheetah powers! We have super speed. Koki, run around and look for them. I'll wait right here, so we don't get separated. Come back to me if you find them, or if you...don't."

Koki nodded, and activated her suit. In an orange flash of light she became nothing more than a vacating blur. Five agonizing minutes passed, which Aviva spent staring at the visage of the contained, unawakened beast, until Koki returned, panting.

"I looked as long as I could, I just have no more stamina left." She said. "We're gonna have to go."

Aviva shook her head, then nodded, then wiped her tears away. Koki deactivated, ran to grab the small folding table, and threw it against the big window. Nothing. Aviva grabbed a metal chair and bashed it there as well. A small crack. Koki threw the table in the same spot, and the crack spread. Water began spurting through the little seams. The two girls put their oxygen masks on over their faces, and Koki took one final swing at the window. Water gushed in through the small hole, and the girls scraped along the sides of the cracked glass with metal chairs to expand it, until it was big enough to crawl through, the water spouting solidly into their faces as they pushed themselves through the rush, trying not to get pulled back inside once they got out of the crevasse and into the open ocean.

The swim to the surface took less time than the swim from it they'd taken as crabs; of course in choosing that animal form before they were more concerned with getting inside the underwater fortress than getting to it, but still it was an ominous shift. In the human form, things felt smaller, stiller, sadder, the ocean was darker, even with the light of the new morning streaming into it.

Their heads breached into the air. They were farther along the beach from where they entered, from where Jimmy was waiting, and seeing them emerge. As the girls swam for the nearest land he sprinted to meet them.

"What's happened?" Jimmy asked. "Where's Chris, where's Martin? Don't tell me they're still down there!"

Aviva winced. "They're still down there, we think."

"Someone or something set off the base's self-destruct sequence." Koki explained, disheartened. "We didn't know where Chris was or how long we had, so we just..."

"You left." Jimmy said.

"We tried to look for them first, but there wasn't enough time." Koki said.

Aviva huffed. "It still hasn't blown up yet. We should've stayed, we should've -"

As she said that there was a great rumbling. They all turned to the ocean, a ring of waves was thrown up, and the sea began to bubble tremendously as if it were boiling. It was all the air racing to the surface as the old research facility collapsed in on itself, like an old phantom finally falling into its resting grave.

"Oh my god." Aviva muttered. "There it goes."

"Let's hope they made it out." Koki said.

"Hope? _Hope?"_ Aviva whipped around angrily. "We might have just _killed them_. We should have stayed behind, we should have looked longer, we should have-"

"You saw how quickly that thing went off, it was only, like, 10 minutes!" Koki exclaimed. "There wouldn't have been time to do that, we _all_ would have died."

"So we came here for nothing?" Aviva sobbed. "We just... lost them both?"

"I don't know." Koki grabbed Aviva's hands. "We... have to wait and see."

Aviva knew. She leaned forward clung tightly, as Koki returned the embrace and looked sadly over her shoulder.

But then - about a hundred yards off, Koki saw a person coming out of the water. There was that familiar green frame to the oxygen mask, but - they were too tall, and - the hair was too light, and -

Koki pushed Aviva off and spun her around by the shoulder, pointing at the emerging figure. "Look! Aviva, it's Martin!"

Aviva saw him, her eyes widened and sparkled. She let out an ecstatic laugh, and began running towards the returning friend - but that jog became faster, fiercer, more frightened, when everything else hit: Martin was walking backwards out of the ocean, dragging a body out with him. It was Chris, who was not moving, and had no oxygen mask on - what should have been on his face was instead in Martin's hand, his fingers running through an obvious hole in the middle of the glass.

Martin laid Chris down as soon as his head was out of the reach of the tide, then pivoted and knelt over him. He began turning Chris' head side to side, compressing his chest repeatedly, or occasionally leaning over to pass on some gasping ounce of life, trying to revive him. Aviva could see Martin's lips moving, he was talking to his brother, openly weeping through it all, but Aviva, and everyone else sprinting behind her, was too far off to hear what was being said.

_Not Chris, no. You have to get up, you have to be okay_, she thought. _Your brother needs you._

Aviva was about ten feet away when a burst of water billowed out from Chris' mouth, and he sputtered back to life, coughing vigorously. She could see a huge, relieved, shaking smile be sculpted by the grimace that had racked Martin's face, as Chris, still heaving, put his hand onto his shoulder, and Martin pulled Chris in to hug him tightly, glad he was okay, glad he was in the waves, and no longer locked beneath them.

Aviva crashed into the brothers with an enormous tackle hug, but the two were planted so firmly to the ground that they were not knocked over. Koki and Jimmy closely followed, turning around the sides so Martin could be completely enveloped by his friends.

In their arms, Martin's energy drained away. His grip on Chris weakened, and he sank down into their hold. He hadn't slept in so long, was stuck in the same position for so long, and their embrace was so warm, so he curled up against them. They were nestled together on the beach for some time, just letting the ocean wash across them with her breathing waves. No one was keeping track of how long they were there, and quite frankly, they might have stayed huddling like that until the sun set again were it not for the sound of some sort of aircraft flying close over ahead drawing their faces up out of confusion and curiosity.

"What the heck?" Jimmy asked, squinting in the sun. "Is that the Tortuga?"

It was indeed the Tortuga, flying unsteadily over them, casting a large, dark shadow onto the crew. It turned and touched down with the hangar door, which opened shortly after landing, facing them. Its missing leg was replaced, and whoever did that job did it so skillfully, you never could've told it was ever taken away.

"How did it get here?" Aviva uttered as she rose to her feet.

"I was just fine with driving back, now we have to deal with whatever this is." Jimmy grumbled.

"Well, let's deal with it." Chris wheezed.

Martin's eyes were dark and sad, but nonetheless he rose with everyone else. Both Chris and Koki put their hands on his back to help move him on, as Aviva lead the charge into the belly of the unexpected Tortuga.

.

.

.

"I was hoping I _wouldn't_ find you here." Boomed one Paul Hubbard, who was standing waiting for them in the main room, along with that stoic and intimidating lady, who was wearing the exact same peacoat that she was before. In addition, there was some other guy with a side cut, a 5-o-clock shadow and a leather jacket, who leaned on the wall by the cockpit with a toothpick sticking out of his mouth.

"What are you doing here?" Aviva asked.

The guy in the jacket snickered, and side-glanced at Hubbard, who was absolutely fuming, but trying so hard to keep his composure.

"The fool I was." He grumbled. "Seeing you again made me think anew I could convince you to join us, that you merely doubted the benefits, and that," he spread his arms out as if gesturing at the entire ship, "if you saw what you could be capable of with our resources, you might be persuaded."

"I've told you-" Aviva started.

"Yes, I see my folly now! We fixed up your ship, yet found you, lo and behold, meddling in the affairs I told you not to, that I _directly ordered you_ not to!"

"'Ordered?'" Aviva scoffed. "You say that like you're my boss, which you aren't."

"Hoo-hoo!" Sneered the leather jacket guy, who slapped his hands together and rushed into the cockpit, presumably to avoid the outburst he predicted would follow.

Paul Hubbard was red in the face. "Boss? _Boss? _This is not about being someone's _boss!_ I have enough _resources_ to be _everyone's boss!_ I could assassinate the leader of a sovereign nation, and nobody would _bat an eye!"_

"Unlikely." Koki muttered, very quietly.

"Wait." Said Chris. "How would you know we were 'meddling?'" He coughed a few times after, clutching his lungs.

"It was obvious." Hubbard said, regaining his composure. "Why else would you have your Martin Kratt? Why else would you be here? Don't tell me it was for a relaxing day on the beach, you can't be that stupid as to think I'd fall for that."

There was a moment of silence, as a horrified, silent rage spread across Chris' whole body.

"You... knew about this place?" He said.

"Yes." Hubbard said, brusquely.

"So you could have come and saved my brother, at any time, and you didn't?"

"It's more complicated than that." Hubbard said.

"'_Complicated!?'_ What happened to being able to kill the leader of a foreign nation just a few minutes ago? Suddenly you have a problem with a quarter-mile of water, and a man with a goat's head?"

"_Goat's head?__"_ Koki whispered, turning to Aviva, expecting her to shrug, but Aviva instead marched forward.

"He doesn't mean that kind of complicated." She glowered.

"Thank you, miss Cor-"

"I saw what was being made down there." She said. "Whoever is behind this has figured out how to create life, and is still figuring out how to make it dangerous." Hubbard said nothing. "You don't want to stop them. You want to _use_ them."

"_What."_ Chris snarled.

"That's still a gross simplification of things." He said. "Miss Corcovado, I'm sure you'd understand. You are a once-in-a-lifetime genius. Your work is invaluable, irreplaceable. If you were 'stopped' or killed or something, we wouldn't know what we'd lose."

"Yeah, but Aviva's not a psychopath." Chris' voice cracked in his rage.

"No, of course not." He said. "But if she was, it wouldn't make her brilliant mind any less _brilliant_. And that's the case here. We want nothing more than to cultivate the person's genius advancements in science."

"So you can use it for yourself." Aviva said.

"Eventually, it would be foolish not to! But we are here to be secret moderators. They don't know about it, you certainly shouldn't, but we are watching them, following them, so they can continue their research, but without anyone getting hurt."

"With-without?" Chris flew off the handle. He was so tired, so angry, his chest still ached from being filled with water, adrenaline still pumped through him. In his fury he marched at Hubbard. "Without anyone getting hurt?" He pointed at himself and Martin. "We! We got hurt! I'll bet the millions of people in 'sovereign nations' who you unleash your weapons on once you get your hands on their creations are gonna get hurt! Martin got hurt, _Martin got hurt_ and you did _n_-"

Paul Hubbard punched Chris across the face. It was a terrible, forceful blow, and he was knocked very decidedly to the ground.

Martin, this whole time, had been quite inactive. He was too spent to get as involved or worked up as everyone else, but he was listening, silently letting resentment simmer in him for this ridiculous man.

But this made things boil over.

"Oh, you just made a _big_ mistake." Martin growled. While everyone rushed to help Chris, fists clenched he stomped up to Hubbard, spurred on by pure tension.

"You... puny people, and your puny understanding of this world." Hubbard grunted. "You all think using emotionality, when you should be using logic; nothing is ever sustained by helping every puny creature that comes crawling at your feet, especially not when they were in the path to be trampled by great, unapologetic progress. You all can live in your little fantasy world while the rest of us do real work, but if you try to impose your childish ideals on our machine, you have no right to get _fussy_ when we hit you with a _wake up call._"

Martin stopped and thought about it. Then he in turn punched Paul Hubbard in the face.

"Što si učinio!" The woman shouted. She pulled out her two hand guns and pointed them both at Martin, who backed up, with his hands raised in front of him.

"Hubbard, stop this!" Aviva shrieked.

"I don't care, kill them all, Ubica." He said at the woman, rubbing his chin.

"You can't make us disappear!" Aviva cried.

"Sure I can!"

"Our families?"

"Consider them gone."

"The Wild Kratts kids?"

"You guys have children? Quite the reckless position for that responsibility, but no matter."

Aviva snickered. "No, the Wild Kratts kids. The millions of children from around the world who follow our adventures?"

Hubbard paused. This Ubica turned to him.

"Mogu li ih ubiti?" She asked. He put his hand out in front of her.

"Since the _second_ Martin vanished," Koki piped in, "I've been getting calls from kids everywhere, wondering where he went, wondering what happened to him, what happened to us."

"Yes." Aviva smiled nervously, knowing she was grasping at straws in terms of what would make this man back off. "You really think you could cover up _all those kids_, and all of _their_ families, too?"

Hubbard stared her down, his eyes bulging, his face red. Everyone's hearts were nearly beating out of their chest, especially Chris, who had fallen into a coughing fit in that moment.

"You're gonna owe us for these parts we installed on your _flying turtle_." He spat through gritted teeth.

"No we won't." Aviva said. "We never agreed to you installing them in the first place. We aren't accountable for that." She stood tall. "Now get off my ship."

There was another uncomfortable, uncertain silence. Hubbard burst out laughing.

"I sold you short, I really did!" He said. "You do know how to play the game!"

"This isn't a game." Aviva scowled.

"It's a metaphor, sweetheart, don't push your luck." He chuckled. "Alright, Wathel, Ubica, let's go." The other man got out from the cockpit. His face was red from laughter, and he gave Aviva a big wink. Ubica groaned and stowed away her hand guns, keeping her hands in her pockets.

"Eh," Hubbard continued, "I'd tell you to stay out of it from here on out, but honestly, I don't think I have to. You guys look _terrible_. Get some rest, and don't worry about this anymore, alright? Worry gives you wrinkles, you know." He slapped Martin hard on the shoulder on the way out, which made the poor guy stagger. "On the same note, don't worry about us getting home, we put a car in your hangar." He grunted.

Aviva followed them down there. She watched them drive off along the beach in their stowaway black SUV, until they took a turn into the brush, back onto the road and out of sight. Aviva took a deep breath. She had her ship. She had her crew. From here, it was a matter of putting the pieces back together, and in the hands of those friends, it might be a simple matter indeed.

She turned and went back to everyone else. They were all on the floor together; Martin was lying completely on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Jimmy saw Aviva come in, and his face lit up.

"That was _crazy. _And scary." He grinned. "I thought we were all dead!"

"Thank god it's over." Koki sighed.

"That was brilliant!" Jimmy continued. "Aviva, you were brilliant!"

"I was honest." She shrugged.

"Sorry I punched him in the face." Martin groaned.

"Are you kidding?" Jimmy said. "_I_ wanted to punch him in the face. And this is _me_ we're talking about here!"

"Yeah, well," Martin chuckled, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He never finished his thought.

Chris spoke up. He had been staring at the floor. "So... now what. Are we gonna go home?" His eyes almost looked as tired as Martin's.

"Of course." Aviva said gently. "Does someone want to get the Createrra?"

"I will, I know where it is." Jimmy leapt up and bounded away, seemingly, for the moment, the only one with any spirit left in them.

.

.

.

The crew was as quick as they could be to get things underway. Fortunately the Raptor Commission, or at the very least Paul Hubbard, hadn't bothered fixing the other vehicles or even restocking the Tortuga, so nothing needed to be secured other than the Createrra. Before take off, both the brothers instantly fell fast asleep in their chairs. Koki stayed down in the hangar to keep an eye on the functionality of things, while Aviva went up into the cockpit to be with Jimmy as the ship began to rise.

"So, what happened down there?" He asked quietly. "You all seem really shaken up. I mean, I figured you would be, but still... some of that stuff sounded pretty weird."

Aviva rolled her shoulders. "I don't have the whole picture myself. I'll have to ask Chris about the whole goat-man thing, when he wakes up."

"Yeah... poor guy. Poor guys. I- I can't imagine what either of them went through."

"Yeah, I'm definitely going to have everyone take a break, be with family. They deserve it, and, well... honestly, I just want them all to recover."

"Even though that's just what Hubbard wants you to do?"

She hesitated. "Forget Hubbard. It's what I want us to do. It's what we need to do."

"Yeah." Jimmy said. "Hey, wait a minute. What is _that?"_ He pointed.

They were at a position where they could see the whole beach beneath them, whence they had lifted off. There, just at the edge of the water, was a greyish metal sphere with a glass window.

"Eh, looks like an old sub or something, probably from the facility. It must've washed up after the place exploded, I'll bet it's junk. Let's just get out of here."

"Don't have to tell me twice." Jimmy said.

But as the Tortuga turned its back to that pod, its door opened with a hiss, and a bedraggled woman slunk out of it. Fists on the sand, she glowered at the ship.

Nora Donovan had had a perfect record. Every assignment, every operation she saw through to a T, and this one should have been the easiest of all. If even the Raptor Commission, one of the most resolute and resourceful task forces on the planet, who thought themselves so sneaky and powerful, had been nothing more than little scavenging ants, who everyone knew about, who everyone knew to be only harmless nuisances, what threat could a ragtag pack of tree-hugging _children_ possibly have posed?

And yet, Wilfred was dead, the laboratory was annihilated, the closest successful specimen was drowned, and flying off from it all, unscathed, was that stupid little turtle ship she thought she had so handily smashed.

The boss was not going to be happy.

A crooked, angry grin was smeared across her face. The boss didn't have to know. The boss didn't have to do anything at all. She could resign, right then and there, to pursue her latest side project - nay, her latest _singular passion project_. Normally she was a cat who toyed with prey, someone with inhuman maliciousness crammed into a superhuman body, but now she was thinking on something very human, the most human thing she ever thought.

And that thought was so terrible, so dark and deep and drowning, that in the wake of it, even the ocean held its breath.

Nora Donovan was thinking on revenge.

"Catch you later, _Wild Kratts_."

.

.

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_TILL NEXT TIME, FIN_


End file.
